Auto sales fall 8% in December, 6.5% in 2018

An 8 per cent drop in December auto sales solidified last year’s overall decline in light vehicle sales from the record hit a year earlier, said DesRosiers Automotive Consultants Inc. Thursday.

The auto consultant said 114,289 vehicles sold in December, compared with 124,247 in the same month last year, for a 10th straight month of declines.

The drop is a hit to the market but still shows fairly robust sales, said Dennis DesRosiers, president of the consultancy company.

“Any negative is difficult for the market, but to put it into perspective, it was only four or five years ago that if you got to 1.5 million you were nirvana. And now we complain about almost two million.”

The industry should expect a similar drop for this year, likely somewhere between a 2- and 4-per-cent decline in sales, he said.

Light truck sales, which include pickup trucks and various types of SUVs, rose 0.6 per cent in 2018, while generally more fuel efficient passenger car sales dropped 9.7 per cent.

General Motors, which has faced criticism for plans to close its Oshawa Assembly Plant, saw sales drop 30 per cent in December from a year earlier.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles also saw a steep drop in December at 32.5 per cent, while Ford Motor Co. was down 8.4 per cent. Toyota sales were up 28 per cent and Honda sales were up 11.2 per cent.

Ford was the top-selling brand in Canada, with 297,902 vehicles sold, driven by its F-150 pickup truck, despite a 3.4 per cent overall decline for the year.