DesRosiers Automotive Consultants reports soft retail sales across key automotive segments, calling them “worrying declines.”

While the research firm did caution against reading too much into one month’s performance, the multi-segment drop in year-over-year performance was notable:

June retail sales for new vehicle dealers decreased 8.6% compared to the same month the previous year.

Used vehiicle dealers were similarly down 6.1% compared to June 2023.

Automotive parts, accessories, and tire stores noted a 7.6% decrease in June compared to last year. According to the Statistics Canada data tables, which DAC cites as a source, this segment generated approximately $1,25 Billion CAD in June sales.

By way of some explanation, DAC noted that monthly fluctations are common and also that June was also the month when the CDK software outage hit the vehicle sales segment.

“Retail sales have remained stable in the first half overall and have maintained high dollar value figures, but June itself has shown notable weakness,” commented Andrew King, Managing Partner at DAC.

On a Year to Date basis, segments performed better.

Used vehicle dealers saw a 0.9% increase with new vehicle dealers similarly seeing a 0.5% bump upwards.

Gasoline stations, inversely, saw retail sales down by a minor 0.4%.

Automotive parts, accessories, and tire stores noted a 1.1% decrease compared to the record high in the first half of 2023. 

Also according to the Statistics Canada data this segment generated approximately $7.57 Billion CAD in the first half of 2024. compared to $7.61 B CAD in 2023.

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