Once again, booming light-truck sales led the Canada new light-vehicle market to a record performance in October, erasing a 28-year-old benchmark.
October LV sales totaled 144,869, an average of 5,571 on each of 26 selling days, relegating the 138,460 units, 5,128 daily, sold in1985 to second place for the month.
Compared with year-ago, when daily sales of 5,408 units netted 135,199 deliveries, October’s tally was 3.0% higher.
As has been the case for much of the year, it was record light-truck volume of 81,536 units that pushed the industry to its new October high, outpacing prior-year’s 75,173 by 4.3% to a seventh consecutive October light-truck sales record.
On the other hand, cars fared no better than 15th place, with sales of 63,333 units outpacing prior-year’s 60,026 by 1.5%, but posing no threat to the October record of 105,863 deliveries posted in 1985.
Ford again led the industry with October LV sales of 22,039, 4.0% better than 20,280 units a year earlier. It was the automaker’s best October performance since 1997, when 23,487 units were sold.
Ford noted that three of its vehicles, Escape, Explorer and F-150, posted their best October sales in history.
Chrysler said its 18,007 October deliveries were its best showing for the month since 18,204 units were delivered in 2002.
Fourth-place Toyota posted sales of 17,594 Toyota and Lexus LVs in October. That bested prior-year’s volume of 17,101, but fell short 1.1% when adjusted for the different number of selling days.
At the same time, Honda claimed an October record of 13,770 units for Honda-brand LVs, an increase of 14.2% from the prior year. Combined Honda and Acura sales rose 9.2% from year-ago to an 11-year high of 15,302 units.
Industry LV sales in the first 10 months were 1,492,797 units, a gain of 3.8% on like-2012’s 1,438,026 with the Detroit Three accounting for 44.9% of the total compared with 44.7% year-ago.
Asian automakers’ 10-month market share was 45.5% as against 45.6% last year, while European makes dipped to 9.7% from 9.8%.
