Last year’s first-round of lockdown impacted the automotive industry, but Canadian auto sales seem to have recovered in the first quarter of 2021.
Major automakers are welcoming big sales bumps in the first three months of the year. General Motors, for instance, reported that its Canadian sales were up 30 percent, totaling 62,552 units.
Sandor Piszar, VP of sales for GM Canada, told Reuters that the sales were driven by “strong demand for pickups, EVs, and SUVs.”
Stellantis, meanwhile, sold 46,077 vehicles, up 4 percent over Q1 2020. More impressively, though, Chrysler sales nearly tripled to 2,360.
Also Read: Hyundai Records Its Best Sales Month Of All-Time In March 2021
Sales in the first quarter of 2020 totaled just 328,601, down from 418,581 in 2019, according to Goodcarbadcar.net. That marked an industry-wide drop of 21.5 percent.
The good news for automakers in 2021 is that Q2 sales figures shouldn’t be hard to top as, last year, the market’s sales dropped even further from April to June. Canadians bought just 305,578 new cars in Q2 2020, down more than 45 percent from the year before. Just how much higher sales will go, though, remains to be seen.
Between the global chip shortage and Canada’s largest province returning into a third lockdown, per the CBC, April sales may not be as impressive as automakers doubtless hope they will be.
