Record spending on new vehicles: StatsCan
Last Updated: Monday, April 23, 2007 | 11:06 AM ET
CBC News
Canadians drove the number of new vehicles sold in 2006 to its second highest annual level — and paid more for those vehicles than ever before, says Statistics Canada.
Collectively, they bought 1,666,327 new cars and trucks for a record total value of $54.6 billion — up 3.9 per cent from the previous year, according to a Statistics Canada report released Monday.
Despite rising gas prices, the sales of gas-hungry minivans, sport utility vehicles, light and heavy trucks, vans and buses surged to a new record high.
Consumers bought 803,166 of these vehicles in 2006, up 2.3 per cent from the previous year.
The average sale price of a new vehicle also hit a new high, rising by 1.7 per cent to about $32,700.
Consumers in the western provinces bought more expensive vehicles than their eastern counterparts.
The Statistics Canada report says that while sales of new passenger cars increased for a second consecutive year, they still fell far short of the record level set in 2002.
Continuing a long-term trend, passenger cars built overseas accounted for 33.6 per cent of the country's new car market in 2006.
That's up from 10 years earlier when overseas-built vehicles accounted for only 13.3 per cent of sales.
North America's traditional "Big Three" automakers still control a slight majority of the market.
But they are losing market share to automaker "transplants" — plants owned by overseas companies that build or assemble vehicles in North America.
