Before delving into these top stories, as usual Ford’s F-Series claimed the Canadian new vehicle market’s top overall sales position with 9,458 deliveries, despite a 3.4-percent downturn month-over-month (MoM), while its -37.3 year-over-year (YoY) results were less notable than July’s even more dramatic decline.
Back to the big news, the CR-V rose up a single notch to second in overall sales and first amongst unibody, non-truck vehicles, with 5,837 deliveries, but like the F-Series its upward climb in ranking had nothing to do with increasing its monthly sales. In fact, its August results represented a -6.0-percent downward slide in activity, although Honda’s compact crossover did manage to grow its sales by 11.3 percent YoY.
The news was similar over at Toyota, but its fall from grace was much harsher due to 7,646 RAV4 sales in July, which was relatively high, and only 5,264 in August, which represented a -21.5-percent plunge MoM, plus adding insult to injury the compact SUV’s YoY slowdown was even more considerable at 31.1 percent.
The August doldrums continued over at newly-formed Stellantis (the name chosen when Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and PSA Group joined forces back in January), which saw the Ram brand’s full-size Pickup, which sold just 4,837 units last month, find 3.7 percent fewer buyers than in July, while the model’s YoY difference was -46.6 percent, reminding us that Canada’s auto market is nowhere near recovered yet.
Back to the imports, Toyota’s Corolla narrowly edged Honda’s Civic out in their longstanding popularity contest last month, with the former finding 4,268 new buyers and the latter just 4,255, the difference being lucky number 13 (lucky for Toyota, at least). In an unusually positive move (mathematically speaking) last month, Toyota actually grew MoM Corolla sales by 2.8 percent, while the compact car’s YoY results were up by 12.0 percent. As for its arch-rival, -12.9 percent fewer Canadians purchased Civics in August than the month before, while the cars’ YoY comparison saw monthly sales fall by 10.9 percent.
If we were totalling automaker deliveries instead of brand sales, General Motors’ twinned full-size trucks would’ve been second in their class as well as runners-up overall, but unfortunately for GM, sales statistics are tallied by nameplate, so therefore its Chevrolet Silverado only managed seventh in the overall standings due to 3,652 deliveries, while its GMC Sierra eked out an eighth-place finish with 3,217 sales of its own. This represented a MoM decline of -3.7 percent for both models, plus a -19.4-percent drop in YoY deliveries for the Silverado and a -29.1-percent downgrade for the Sierra.
The final two top-10 A-listers for August were Ford’s Escape and Hyundai’s Kona, the former moving up a peg and the latter re-entering after being nudged off by its Tucson sibling; the latter not able to make its way back up to this top-tier echelon last month. The blue-oval compact SUV, however, sold 2,765 units for a MoM downturn of -3.7 percent, and that after 15.0 percent more deliveries than it managed 12 months ago, whereas the Tucson’s 2,634 unit-sales last month represented a -28.5-percent drop in YoY deliveries.