2013 Ford F-150
The Ford F-Series pickup and the Honda Civic are comfortably in front in the races for best-selling truck and passenger car in Canada.
Sales of the Ford pickup are so far ahead of any other vehicle as of the end of November that it will repeat as the best-selling vehicle overall in Canada.
The strength in the pickup market has helped Ford to a 15 per cent jump in full-sized pickup sales this year and kept its standard-bearer ahead of the Ram from Chrysler Canada Inc.
In the passenger car segment, Civic will hold off Hyundai Elantra and Toyota Corolla, which outperformed the Honda compact in year-to-date sales percentage increases.
Overall, three passenger car models bucked a long-term trend in November by posting strong sales in a month when mid-sized cars sales overall fell 8 per cent.
That decline in mid-sized car sales is part of a decline in that segment. Since 2003, when they grabbed 32.5 per cent of the passenger car market, sales of mid-sized cars have fallen by more than one-third. They held just 20 per cent of the Canadian market in the first 11 months of the year.
One reason for that decline is that drivers are migrating to other vehicles in the truck segment such as compact and intermediate crossover utility vehicles, said industry analyst Dennis DesRosiers, president of DesRosiers Automotive Consultants Inc. In addition, all auto makers have scaled back sales of vehicles to fleets – in particular to rental companies – and traditionally many of those sales were mid-sized cars, DesRosiers said.
But the Hyundai Sonata, Ford Fusion and Toyota Camry posted gains of 56 per cent, 46 per cent and 24 per cent respectively in November.
Those gains may have been the result of special incentives as auto makers try to meet year-end sales numbers, DesRosiers said.
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