Despite supply shortages, pickups and SUVs still find favour with Canadians.

According to data from the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers Association (CVMA); DesRosiers Automotive Consultants (DAC) and the Global Automakers of Canada (GAC), the bestselling vehicles in Canada during 2021 were the Ford F-150 (116,401 units sold) and Ram full-size pickup (73,477 units).

Rounding out the top five bestselling vehicles were the Toyota RAV4 (61,934 units), GMC Sierra (53,757) and Chevrolet Silverado (51,684).

The top-selling passenger car in Canada, the Honda Civic, came in seventh place (43,556 units sold), followed by its close rival, the Toyota Corolla (40,919 units).

Supply impact

By any stretch, 2021 proved to be a challenging year for OEMs, due to supply constraints that limited the sale of new vehicles. Some models however were more severely impacted than others. Among trucks and SUVs, the two top-selling vehicles saw the most declines largely due to semiconductor shortages and supply disruptions. Ford F-150 sales were down 9.5% from 2020 while Ram sales declined by 12.2%

On the passenger car side, we actually saw a bit of a rebound, with some popular models posting significant sales gains during 2021. Among these were the Toyota Corolla (20.6%), Toyota Camry (16.9%) and Volkswagen Jetta (19.3%) while the Nissan Sentra saw a whopping 47.2% increase in sales—10,017 units versus 6806 for 2020.

Based on the data findings, overall passenger cars remained at par compared with the previous year, while pickup and SUV sales increased by 8.3%. The gap between light trucks and passenger cars continues to grow in Canada, with trucks now accounting for 81.2% market share and passenger cars at 18.8%.