Detroit’s Big Three Rise as Canadian Car Sales Fall Again
Following a drop of 12 percent in the first quarter of 2022 and 10.2 percent in the second quarter, new light-duty vehicle sales in Canada have again dipped by more than 10 percent in the third quarter.
More specifically, stats posted by DesRosiers Automotive Consultants show a plunge of 11.8 percent, representing a total of 387,435 units sold during the period. Of course, supply chain and production issues continue to have a major impact across the industry.
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Detroit’s Big Three have rebounded quite a bit from the same period in 2021, though. General Motors sales were up 27.6 percent for the months of July through September 2022, in part thanks to the Chevrolet Silverado HD and GMC Sierra HD pickups which had their best third-quarter Canadian sales ever and their best calendar-year-to-date sales.
At Stellantis, despite a surprising slump by Jeep, the year-to-year improvement is 14.7 percent. Most of the credit goes to Ram and Dodge, whose Charger and Challenger are experiencing a boom just ahead of their retirement. As for Ford, the past three months resulted in a sales increase of 12.2 percent.
On the other hand, Japanese automakers are going through rough times. Honda and Toyota posted Q3 drops of 37.1 percent and 22.7 percent, respectively. Nissan fared even worse, selling 41.7 percent fewer vehicles than it did a year ago.
According to DesRosiers Automotive Consultants, it was also the lowest September sales total in Canada since 2009, the year of the last recession. The same observation was made following the month of June.