Winners and Losers: April car sales surge for Camry, sag for Prius

April car sales were strong for Toyota Camry, which jumped almost 20% over April 2013 to become to No. 3 top selling car in the U.S. for the month -- ahead of No. 5 Honda Accord and No. 6 Toyota Corolla.

But sales for Toyota’s Prius fell 9.4% for the same period -- and double that for the 2014 year-to-date totals, compared with 2013.

In other head-to-head comparisons, Ford sold 63,387 of its F-series pick up trucks, to claim the No. 1 sales position, well ahead of the 42,775 Silverado pickups sold by Chevy -- the No. 2 selling vehicle, and the 36,673 Ram pickups sold by Chrysler, the No. 4 selling vehicle.

The Ford Fusion and Ford Escape were both well ahead of the Chevy Cruze and Chevy Equinox. The Nissan Altima was ahead of the Hyundai Sonata.

Seeing a big bump, though, was both the Toyota RAV4, sales of which rose 19.9% over the same period a year ago.

For the month, GM kept its claim as the country’s top company, with 18.5% market share. Ford trailed, at 16.5%, as did Chrysler, at 11.9%.

Toyota held position with 13.3% of the April U.S. market. American Honda had 10.2%.

Traditional rivals BMW and Mercedes were neck and neck in total vehicles and market share. BMW sold a total of 29,657 vehicles during the month, for a 2.3% of the total market. Mercedes sold 29,330, for a 2.1% share.

Porsche sold 4,072 cars during the month, a 1% improvement over April 2013.

Tesla, as has already been reported, saw its sales flatten somewhat, with sales off 1.8% from a year ago April, but up a slim 0.3% in year to date sales over 2013.