A red-letter sales jump is in the eye of the beholder, apparently.

For December's sales report, Japanese automaker Mitsubishi posted a "dramatic" vehicle sales increase of 24.8 percent year over year, delivering 77,643 units in 2014.

Sounds great, right? But wait a second--Ford's F-series alone sold 74,355 vehicles just for the month of December.

It's all about perspective: A banner year of sales for Mitsubishi is a month for one model line from other carmakers such as Ford.

Going by individual models, Mitsubishi's strongest player was the Outlander Sport, which sold 2,755 units in December compared with 2,358 for the same period in the previous year. That's 397 more models sold. Sales for the Lancer compact grew from 1,362 in December 2013 to 1,547 for last month, which makes for a sales jump of 185 vehicles.

Year-to-date sales rose by 15,416 vehicles altogether in 2014.

"December marked the 10th consecutive month of year-over-year sales increases and helped us close out the year with an increase of nearly 25 percent over the previous year," Don Swearingen, executive vice president of Mitsubishi's North American division. "Our core models lead the way with Outlander Sport having its best-ever sales year since its introduction, Mirage selling well beyond expectations and Outlander coming in strong up over 6 percent for the year."

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