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More than one million vehicles have been sold in very first six months of year
*Reflects Aston Martin, Ferrari and Lotus sales.
How hot are auto sales in Canada? Consider this: for the 2nd time in a row – and only the third time ever – sales topped 200,000 units in June.
The actual total was 203,752, an increase of Five.8 per cent over last June and a record for the month. Year-to-date sales now stand Four.9 per cent ahead of this time last year. Automakers have sold more than one million vehicles in the very first six months of 2017. Last year, automakers sold 1.95 million vehicles during the year.
As usual, light trucks (up nine per cent) outpaced passenger cars (-0.Three per cent) however the truck share of sixty seven per cent was not as high as it sometimes has been in latest years.
Offshore-based automakers grew their sales more (7.Four per cent) than Detroit (Three.6 per cent), as strong months for Ford (+14 per cent) and GM (+Four per cent) were offset by a seven-per-cent slide for FCA. That helped Oshawa narrowly outsell Windsor for the month.
Ford’s blockbuster month was driven entirely by trucks, with F-Series setting a June record, Explorer sales almost doubling and Escape up twenty three per cent. While Ford car sales declined nine per cent, one interesting anomaly is that the Mustang (a sports car) found more buyers in June than did the Concentrate (a mainstream compact).
Aside from FCA, the only other manufacturer that failed to grow its sales in June was Hyundai, down fifteen per cent. Meantime its sister company Kia advanced nine per cent, driven by 71-per-cent-higher Sportage sales and a massive one hundred sixty one per cent spike for the Sedona minivan.
Atlas carries early weight
Noteworthy among the global automakers, VW Canada surged twenty eight per cent. And that wasn’t only on the strength of Audi: the Volkswagen brand grew thirty per cent. That was helped by four hundred seventy two sales of the fresh Atlas midsize CUV in its very first utter month, but a fatter factor was VW’s sturdy passenger-car sales, paced by a forty five per cent build up for the Golf.
While CUVs proceed to predominate the industry, the Golf’s popularity provides supporting evidence of a mini counter-trend: hatchback cars. Three compact car nameplates that added fresh hatchback variants for two thousand seventeen – the Chevrolet Cruze, Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla – are all showcasing sturdy sales gains this year.
Also worth mentioning is that Toyota’s hard-to-categorise CH-R (TCI lists it under truck sales) seems to have struck a chord with Canadians: the FWD “ute-coupe” has racked up 1,331 sales since going on sale in May. Meantime Nissan’s Qashqai petite CUV posted eight hundred forty one sales in its very first utter month.