Civic and Corolla Canada's most popular cars but sales of high-end cars outperform the market

Auto analyst Dennis Desrosiers published his monthly scorecard of the top-selling vehicles in Canada.

With the exception of the Hyundai Elantra and the Ford Escape, all 20 vehicles on the Top 10 passenger car list and the top 10 light truck list are showing year-to-date declines. In other words, the first six months of 2008 was better for everybody than the first six months of this year. Not that's a surprise.

Here's Desrosiers' take on the big picture for June:

“… small entry level vehicles are hurting as much as any other size of vehicle. These are much lower priced obviously so one would think that they would be drawing in consumers from other segments. This may be true but these vehicles also play to the lower quartile of consumers from an economic perspective and these are the consumers most hurt from the recession and therefore are not buying. The best performing segments are the large/luxury/sport segment which are down 12.6 percent YTD but still much better than the market which is down by 18.3 percent. Mid-sized family vehicles are the worse performing sector down 26.8 percent on the month and 22.3 percent on the year.”

Here's the top-ten selling passenger cars in the country in June, ranked according to the number of units sold. In brackets is the percentage change in sales in June 2009 compared to June 2008:

1. Honda Civic 5,883 ( -24.40% )
2. Toyota Corolla 4,789 ( -20.10% )
3. Mazda3 4,276 ( -22.00% )
4. Hyundai Elantra 3,244 ( 187.10% )
5. Ford Focus 2,851 ( -8.80% )
6. Hyundai Accent 2,575 ( -34.10% )
7. Chevrolet Impala 2,297 ( 30.70% )
8. Ford Fusion 2,130 ( 12.90% )
9. Toyota Matrix 2,008 ( -26.10% )
10. Nissan Versa 1,974 ( 10.60% )

Here's the top-ten selling light trucks, SUVs and minivans in the country in June, ranked according to the number of units sold. In brackets is the percentage change in sales in June 2009 compared to June 2008:

1. Ford F-Series 8,487 ( 38.50% )
2. Ford Escape 4,917 ( 41.30% )
3. Ford Ranger 3,067 ( 50.20% )
4. Toyota RAV4 2,615 ( 49.90% )
5. Dodge Ram 2,531 ( -26.10% )
6. Hyundai Sante Fe 2,254 ( 104.20% )
7. Honda CR-V 2,238 ( 54.70% )
8. Chevrolet Silverado 2,016 ( -10.60% )
9. GMC Sierra 1,958 ( -21.10% )
10. Ford Edge 1,662 ( 23.30% )