August marks another record month for new car sales

Not only was August another record-setting month for Canadian new car sales (the fifth monthly record this year), but Canada has also almost a dozen brands at or close to an all-time sales record for the month.

Some Western provinces are down slightly, and Quebec is still a troubled market although showing some improvement. These sales records are rooted in the Ontario consumer coming back into the market in full force and the West holding close to last year’s sales records.

The SAAR tracked at 1.9 million units in August, slightly below July’s tracking but still very strong. Actual monthly sales were 171,560 units, up 7.9 percent from 2013, which in itself was a sales record. This brought year to date sales up to 1,256,649 units, which was an increase of 4.6 percent from 2013.

DesRosiers says it expects a point or two increase this year so an increase of almost 5 percent is, frankly speaking, quite spectacular.

Canada also continued its embrace of light trucks, which were up 14.1 percent in August and are now up 8.9 percent YTD. Passenger car sales were flat (up 0.1 percent) and are actually down by 0.8 percent year to date.

Porsche led the percentage gain race with sales of 521 units up 65.9 percent, but eight other brands witnessed double digit increases for the month. Audi was up 31.7 percent, BMW up 26.2 percent, Chrysler Fiat up 22.4 percent, Land Rover up 30.4 percent, Mitsubishi up 48.9 percent, Nissan up 36.3 percent, Subaru up 10.5 percent and Volkswagen up 11.4 percent.

Despite Chrysler Fiat’s incredible sales gains in August, Ford was the number one retailer for the month and is now only 130 units behind Chrysler Fiat for the best-selling OEM position YTD.

General Motors had a good month (up 4.8 percent) and are now ahead of last year’s sales by 1.9 percent. 

www.desrosiers.ca