At Canadian auto dealerships, the evidence of a recovery is starting to pile up.
Hyundai’s Canadian division roared to its best month on record, Chrysler Canada Inc. sales surged 35%, and Ford’s domestic unit had its best April in eight years, new figures will show Monday, providing more signals that auto makers are bouncing back from a dismal performance a year ago.
Major auto companies in both Canada and the United States report their latest monthly sales Monday amid what is still being described as a tepid recovery. Projections for auto sales in the critical U.S. market for 2010 remain far below pre-recession levels.
But the Canadian market is proving to be healthier, and the figures for April in both countries are likely to show a solid rebound from the spring of 2009, when auto companies were battered by the recession and two of the Detroit Three were on the verge of collapsing into bankruptcy protection and government-sponsored bailouts.
Among the factors lifting Chrysler out of the depths of its slump: a jump in demand for some larger vehicles. Record sales of Dodge Ram pickups and Dodge Grand Caravan minivans -- up 88% and 39%, respectively -- boosted Chrysler Canada’s sales to 20,630 in April, up from 15,311 in April, 2009.
Chrysler sales for the first four months of 2010 have jumped 21%. As of the end of March, it had jumped back into the top three in the Canadian sales rankings.
Hyundai, meanwhile, has been on a roll for about 18 months, helped by a zero-per-cent financing program, an improving record for quality and the success of some passenger car models such as the Hyundai Sonata. Hyundai Auto Canada Inc. posted a 16% increase in sales in April, on top of the best January, February and March sales in the company’s history.
The South Korea-based auto maker topped the 100,000 annual sales level last year for the first time and is exceeding last year’s record pace. Its sales in the first four months of April are 22% higher than in the same period in 2009.
Ford Motor Co. of Canada Ltd., meanwhile, enjoyed a 24% increase in April sales compared with last year, to 23,408 vehicles -- the most it has sold in an April since 2002.
The April 2009, sales figures should be relatively easy for most auto makers to surpass. The industry sold 143,900 vehicles that month, down 18% from year-earlier levels, which represented the worst April sales performance in almost a decade.
Vehicle sales are also bouncing back in the U.S. market, but not as solidly as in Canada, where the unemployment rate is lower and consumer confidence is higher.
Economics firm IHS Global Insight expects the U.S. sales pace to be 11.2 million on a seasonally adjusted annual rate basis when the final numbers are tallied this afternoon.
That would be a drop from the 11.8 million level of March, but an improvement from the depths of the recession a year ago.
The U.S. market was fuelled in part by incentives last month. Toyota Motor Sales USA continued the most aggressive incentive program in its history as it tries to bounce back from a recall crisis that has dogged the company since January.
The world’s largest auto maker recalled more than eight million vehicles globally and senior executives were summoned to the U.S. Congress to explain why some of the company’s vehicles were subject to sudden, unexplained acceleration that has been blamed for more than three dozen deaths on U.S. roads.
