Honda Captures First And Last Place In Canadian New Car Market
Congratulations to the Big H; Honda managed to capture the top spot in Canadian passenger car sales for the 15th year running, while also earning the dubious honor-or, honour, as it would be spelled in Canada – of offering the slowest-selling vehicle in Canada.
Despite the volley of criticism leveled at the 2012 Civic, Canadians made it the best-selling passenger car yet again by a massive margin (by Canadian new car market standards). The second place Hyundai Elantra trailed the Civic by some 14,000 units. 8 of the top 10 passenger cars on the list were small, with the Toyota Corolla, Mazda3, Chevrolet Cruze, Ford Focus, Volkswagen Jetta and Hyundai Accent rounding out the list.
Adding light trucks to the mix bumps the Civic down to with the Ford F-Series and Dodge Ram taking the top two spots, with the Dodge Grand Caravan bookending the Civic at #4. Following the 5th place Elantra is the Ford Escape and GMC Sierra, while the Chevrolet Silverado trails the Corolla and Mazda3 at 10th place. Clearly, high gasoline prices aren’t stopping Canadians from indulging in the same full-size truck fetish as our American neighbors.
At the opposite end of the scale, Canada’s worst-selling car is the Honda Insight, with a mere 168 units sold. In fairness, supply of the Insight, and the CR-Z, Canada’s third-worst seller, are restricted by Honda Canada due to a lack of demand and the poor exchange rate making them extremely unprofitable. But there’s no excuse for not selling more units than the second-place Mitsubishi i, which might be the last truly dreadful car left on sale.
More by Derek Kreindler
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IMO, the reason I like the CR-Z is that nobody else is driving it. It's probably the most interesting commuter car available and you don't get stuck having to drive co-workers out during lunch.
Civic is crap. And not even cheap crap. I never understood the popularity of them here, especially after they lost their sporty edge in 2001.
I'm on my third Civic as a daily driver. I've never had a problem with any of them. My mom is driving the first one with 140k on it (15 years old) and it still runs like it's new. My current Civic, an '09 LX Coupe with a manual transmission is fun to drive, rather zippy and averages 33 mpg. Plus they do a great job at holding their resale value. I'll probably buy another one yet.
As a Honda owner, I'm delighted at the sales disaster befalling the Insight and the CR-Z. Why? Because it represents Honda's management team getting it's butt kicked for making bad product decisions and coasting on the company's momentum. The same folks that brought us the grenading transmissions in the V-6 models, the infamous Acura beak, and who left the excellent Element concept to die on the market because they were too smug and self-protective to fix the fatal flaws they saddled it with. I've been reading about some of Honda's innovative proposals based on the Fit platform, and I'm convinced we never would have seen these if the company had been allowed to get away with selling crap.