Driving By Numbers: The Honda Civic will not end 2022 as Canada’s best-selling car

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For the first time since 1997, the Honda Civic will not finish the year as Canada’s most popular passenger car. A 24-year run that began in 1997 and stretched through 2021 is destined to come to an end. However, it’s not due to a serious shortfall in demand or the sheer popularity of a competitor.

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Rather, severe production limitations — Honda’s brand-wide volume declines are among the worst in Canada this year — caused Civic volume to fall 29 per cent from 2021 levels. According to sales figures from the first 11 months of 2022 compiled by Automotive News, Honda Canada sold 28,513 Civics between January 1 and November 30, roughly 12,000 fewer Civics than during the same period one year prior.

The Toyota Corolla, meanwhile, will inherit the crown despite its own year-over-year downturn. Corolla volume slid 19 per cent from 2021 levels, a 7,210-unit decrease to 31,299 units.

Granted, the year’s not over. With one more month to collect sales, Honda is “only” 2,786 units abaft. This incomplete picture explains why Honda declined to answer a number of questions posed by Driving in the lead-up to this story. Brand communications spokesperson John Bordignon said the company wouldn’t “comment on speculation and rumours.”

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Unfortunately for Honda, this isn’t merely a rumour. In what typically ends as one of the lowest-volume months of the year, Honda doesn’t just need to somehow muster 2,786 Civic sales seemingly out of nowhere — Honda needs to outsell Toyota’s Corolla by 2,786 units. And Honda’s only averaged around 2,600 monthly Civic sales in the second-half of the year.

It’s not going to happen. The year 2022 will go down as the first in which the Toyota Corolla is Canada’s best-selling car. Not unexpectedly, Toyota isn’t counting their chickens before they hatch.“At this point, we would like to refrain from commenting on that,” Toyota’s public relations manager, Romaric Lartilleux, told Driving.

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Toyota isn’t new to gold-medal results. This year also marks the seventh consecutive year in which the Toyota RAV4 is Canada’s top-selling SUV/crossover. The RAV4 dominates Toyota’s leaderboard with 52,088 sales so far this year. Of Toyota’s utility vehicle volume, 88,782 units in all, 59 per cent is RAV4-derived. In addition to Toyota’s 31,299 Corolla sedan and hatchback sales, the company is also reporting 8,631 separate sales from the Corolla Cross subcompact crossover.

It’s not just SUVs. Cross the southern border and Toyota’s Camry is the dominant passenger car in the United States and has been since 2002. In 2022, the Camry’s 21st consecutive year as America’s best-selling car, its nearest rival is the Corolla, 65,061 sales behind.

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Yet in the U.S., as in Canada, leadership in the passenger car category no longer holds the prestige it did in decades past. In 2008, when Honda Canada sold a record 72,463 Civics, the Civic wasn’t just Canada’s No.1 passenger car; it was the No.1 vehicle overall. Passenger cars, however, controlled 54 per cent of the Canadian market in 2008.

That figure now stands at just 18 per cent. Full-size pickups now account for 20 per cent of all Canadian auto sales; SUVs/crossovers another 55 per cent.

There’s no denying the Corolla is a dominant force in its sector — 13 per cent of the cars sold in Canada in 2022’s first three-quarters were Corollas, compared with 8-per-cent market share for the Civic when it set a sales record in 2008. In an imperfect analogy, the Civic’s 2008 victory was akin to an NHLer winning the Art Ross Trophy. The Corolla, meanwhile, won the 2022 award for most points amongst third-pair defenseman.

Put another way, as the Toyota Corolla ascends the throne, its royal wave is witnessed by a fairly sparse crowd.

Surely some of the members of that crowd work at Honda Canada’s Markham HQ. And they’re almost certainly convinced that the only factor stopping the Civic from reclaiming its crown in 2023 is an extension of the supply shortages that caused company-wide volume to fall by more than 40,000 units in 2022.