Another record month for Canadian new car sales

According to DesRosiers Automotive Consultant’s latest report, May 2014 was the best sales month in the history of the industry in Canada with 195.6K units sold, a full 10K units ahead of the previous monthly record.

This was a huge month by any account which also pushed the SAAR up to 1.86 million units. Year-to-date sales are now up 2.9 percent which is the second best on record for any January to May period (January to May 2008 was stronger).

The big winners from a brand point of view can be broken out into two groups: the larger mass market brands and the smaller niche market brands.

With the larger brands (sales greater than 10K units for the month) Nissan led the way with a 28.9 percent growth for the month. Honda, General Motors, Chrysler/Fiat and Volkswagen also had very respectable sales increases with 12.4 percent, 11.8 percent, 7.9 percent and 2.4 percent gains respectably.

Volkswagen’s May sales of 6,465 new cars and light trucks represents the best May result since Volkswagen Canada first began sales in 1952.

Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac dealers delivered 26,444 vehicles in May, up 12 per cent compared to a year ago, marking the company’s best May since 2009 and its best total sales since June 2011.

Ford, Toyota and Hyundai underperformed with Toyota nearly identical to last May, Ford down 2.3 percent and Hyundai down 5.2 percent for the month.

Some of the smaller second-tier brands are blowing away all previous sales records and in many respects are the key success story this year. Land Rover is up 40.8 percent and its sister company Jaguar is up 38.9 percent, Porsche up 32.2 percent, Subaru up 22.8 percent and Audi up 17.6 percent. Mazda also had a big month being up 14.4 percent, however they are still down by 1.5 percent on the year to date figures.

The two leading luxury brands, BMW and Mercedes Benz, also did well in the month with Mercedes Benz up 8.7 percent for the month which puts them up 9.7 percent YTD and BMW up 6.9 percent for the month which brought them slightly above last year’s YTD sales totals up 0.1 percent. Lexus posted strong growth with a 14.2 percent increase in May sales and is up 16.3 percent year-to-date.

Besides Hyundai and Ford, only Acura, MINI, Mitsubishi and Volvo were down for the month and all are struggling on a year to date basis as well.

www.desrosiers.ca