SUVs and trucks make up 70 per cent of new vehicles bought in Canada in 2018

The Trump administration has rolled back Obama-era pollution and fuel efficiency rules for cars and light trucks, saying they were too stringent

Canadians can’t seem to get enough of sport utility vehicles and trucks.

More than 70 per cent of all vehicles sold in Canada in 2018 were light trucks, according to statistics released by DesRosiers Automotive Consultants on Thursday. It is the first time the light truck market – which includes trucks, SUVs and vans – cracked the 70 per cent threshold in Canada.

At the same time, just 29.1 per cent of the new vehicles bought last year were cars, a market that has been steadily shrinking for years.

And don’t expect Canadians’ interest in SUVs – particularly the ever-popular compact models – to go away anytime soon.

“Consumer interest in light trucks saw a surge following the last economic downturn in 2008-2009, and hasn’t looked back since,” DesRosiers president Dennis DesRosiers wrote in a report released Thursday.

“The last time the market was this dominated by a vehicle type was in 1990, where passenger cars held close to a 70 per cent market share.”

Overall vehicle sales in Canada fell 2.6 per cent from 2.039 million in 2017 to 1.985 million last year. According to DesRosiers, the momentum from a record-breaking sales year in 2017 carried over to January and February, but slowed in the second half of the year, where there was a year-over-year decline for the first time since 2009.

While regional sales data has yet to be released, DesRosiers said he expects weakness in the Prairie provinces, largely due to struggles in the oil patch.

Ford Motor Co. ended the year selling the most vehicles in Canada, representing 15 per cent of the market with nearly 300,000 vehicles sold, down 3.4 per cent from a year earlier. General Motors saw its sales dip nearly 5 per cent to 288,310 vehicles sold, while Fiat Chrysler saw a decline of 15.8 per cent to 224,889.

Going into 2019, DesRosiers expects more of the same.

“We expect the market to be down another two to four per cent, but it will continue to be single-digit declines,” he said.

“There is nothing out there that says the market will collapse, but at the same time it’s hard to find anything that would spur it to grow.”

While sales may have been relatively strong in 2018, it was still a turbulent year for the Canadian auto industry.

In late November, the industry was stunned when GM announced a major restructuring plan that will see up to 14,000 workers in North America lose their jobs, nearly 3,000 of which are in the Oshawa assembly plant. The plan, which will save the company $6 billion annually, was in part a response to changing consumer demand towards trucks and SUVs.

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