Desrosiers Top Ten Sales Report for Canada
The Ford F-Series pickup will lead all automotive sales in Canada this year according sales reports compiled by automotive marketing firm Desrosiers.
Selling close to 85,000 units so far in 2013, the F-Series outsells the RAM pickup by about 1.5 times and doubles the next closest competitor, the Honda Civic at 42,000 units. GMC Sierra and Chevy Silverado are separated in the report but, if combined, would only slightly edge out the RAM with a total of 57,000 units sold to date in 2013.
Desrosiers explains some of the trends in their press release below:
Click here for the results in PDF form.
Now that we are 8 months into the year a number of trends and issues are firmly in place. The number one trend is the strength of the large pickup segment.
First off, a little background. Traditionally the large pickup market has been one of the most ‘steady Eddie’ elements of the light vehicle market. Back in the 1980s they accounted for about 10 percent of the overall market year in and year out. With the boom in the West pickups grew in importance and for most of the last 20 years they accounted for roughly 13 percent of total vehicle sales in Canada with volumes consistently at about 200k units.
However, over the last three years they have averaged closer to 260K units and this year they are tracking at about 300K units - a full 100K units above long term tracking levels and closer to a 16/17 percent share of the total market. Some of this growth has been cannibalized from small pickup. Ford exiting the small pickup market has provided 20K additional units of potential for large pickup (Ford has done a good job converting these buyers to F-Series). However, the growth in large pickups has outperformed this. The question is why and is this sustainable?
The level of competition and the excellent product introduced into the segment the last few years accounts for some of the increase and this should hold. As we always say “Product, product, product”. However, this also doesn’t account for all the gains. One element we are still tracking is the possibility of the continued growth in personal use pick-up sales. The West has been the stalwart of the Canadian market the past few years and they have the highest incidence of personal use sales in this segment. If you believe this logic then large pick-up truck sales should hold in the near term and continue in the 17 percent of the market range for quite some time.
Other notable trends to point out in this top ten report.
Civic is starting to pull away from Elantra as the best-selling passenger car. We also think this will continue but for a different reason than one might suspect. We suspect the new Corolla is going to motivate Honda’s approach to Civic. As Honda responds to the new Corolla it may actually help them compete with Elantra.
Ford F-Series will easily be the top selling truck this year. Ford broke the 100K unit mark for the first time with the F-Series last year and are tracking 14 percent higher this year. Normally there is some give back when you have a tough comparable but they have brushed this aside. What is surprising is the fact the new Sierra pickup from GM isn’t participating in the sales boon. GM has historically maintained the number one position in the pickup market however they are now fighting it out with Chrysler for second place.