DETROIT — Americans proved last month that they're head over heels about small sport utility vehicles. They also wanted to buy more than just video game consoles and big-screen TVs on Black Friday.

November auto sales rose 9 percent above a year ago, with a solid piece of the gains coming over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Sales ran at an annual pace of 16.4 million cars and trucks last month, the best in almost seven years.

The numbers gave further evidence that the small SUV is replacing the car as the vehicle of choice for families and aging baby boomers.

Erich Merkle, Ford's top sales analyst, said the small SUVs gained two percentage points of market share in November compared with last year, while small and midsize cars lost two points combined.

Compact SUVs like the Toyota RAV4 and Honda CR-V now make up 15.5 percent of U.S. sales. Through November, Americans bought just more than 1.8 million of them, a 21 percent increase from a year ago.

“The compact SUVs are the perfect functional family vehicle of today,” said Jesse Toprak, senior analyst for the TrueCar.com auto pricing website. “They provide a lot of car for your money, better gas mileage than larger SUVS. They actually are fashionable nowadays.”

Also popular in November were Black Friday deals, traditionally a mainstay for chain stores and technology retailers.

Toyota said more than 25 percent of its sales came over the holiday weekend. General Motors said Black Friday is “obviously becoming a bigger go-to-market strategy in automotive, a little more consistent with other industries.”