These 5 vehicles had the worst starts for 2023 | Driving By Numbers

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Is it too reductionist to simply say the Canadian new vehicle market is in a weird place? Decreased auto sales volume may appear to be linked to skyrocketing prices and high interest rates, but in reality, production woes continue to limit vehicle availability.

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In February 2021, Toyota appeared all but immune to the semiconductor shortage, thanks to what was then described as a four-month supply of chips. But early optimism faded fast. By the end of 2021, most automakers were beginning to realize that this was not a short-term problem. “We believed supplies shortages would be limited,” Honda’s executive vice president, Seiji Kuraishi, said in November 2021, “but we now see the supply shortage is more serious and will last longer.”

Two years later, Toyota and Honda, like many of their competitors, continue to be limited by production constraints.

As a result of these slowdowns and shutdowns, we can no longer look at a vehicle that’s suffering from severe sales reductions and automatically assume that the cause relates to a dearth of consumer interest. But that doesn’t mean we don’t want to know just how poorly 2023 began for specific vehicles.

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To highlight just how severe and prolonged the shake-up has proven to be, we’ve chosen one disastrous start from five different sectors: one SUV/crossover, one pickup, one van, one electric vehicle, and one car. We didn’t want to focus on niche models that are prone to severe fluctuation, so we limited eligibility to vehicles that sold in excess of 1,000 units during the first-quarter of 2022 and also excluded discontinued vehicles and those on hiatus.

SUV/crossover: Toyota Venza — 241, down 79 per cent

The first-generation Toyota Venza was not a flop, at least not in Canada. As a result, when Toyota killed off the first Venza in the United States after the 2015 model year, Toyota Canada was granted access to another year of Venza production. Consider the fact that while the U.S. market for new vehicles is generally between 8 and 10 times larger than Canada’s, Venza volume wasn’t even quite four times stronger in the U.S. than it was here between 2009 and 2015. The Venza even outsold the Camry in Canada in both 2010 and 2011.

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Launching the second-generation Venza as a dedicated hybrid in the midst of a supply chain crunch wasn’t going to be easy for Toyota. in 2021, 6,250 Venzas were sold and another 4,061 in 2022, including 1,150 in the first-quarter of last year. That figure fell 79 per cent in the opening three months of 2023, suggesting Toyota Canada is on track for only 850 Venza sales this year. Meanwhile, first-quarter sales of the new Venza were 31 times stronger in the U.S.

Pickup truck: Jeep Gladiator — 612, down 62 per cent

The Nissan Frontier, Toyota’s Tacoma and Tundra, GMC Canyon, and Chevrolet Colorado all reported first-quarter Canadian sales declines in 2023’s first-quarter. The Jeep Gladiator’s was worse. The 62-per-cent drop from 1,592 units is unfortunately paired with a 25-per-cent Q1 loss from the Gladiator’s donor vehicle, the Wrangler.

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Making matters worse for Jeep in the first-quarter were major decreases from the Compass, Grand Cherokee, Wagoneer, and Renegade. Jeep ended the first-quarter with a 25-per-cent overall decrease to 12,551 units, a drop of 4,108 vehicles.

Electric: Hyundai Ioniq 5 — 1,122, down 46 per cent

Rewind one year and the 2,079 Hyundai Ioniq 5s delivered in the first-quarter of 2022 represented both the best quarter for the Ioniq 5 to date and its first full quarter on the market. So while the Ioniq 5’s 1,122 sales in the first-quarter of 2023 sounds like a drastic decline — and a 46-per-cent drop is drastic — it’s actually the best quarterly result for the Ioniq 5 since early 2022. Over the course of last year, Ioniq 5 deliveries dropped off precipitously from 2,079 in Q1 all the way down to 660 in Q4.

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Van: Toyota Sienna — 531, down 74 per cent

Canada’s minivan segment tumbled yet again in the first-quarter, sliding 19 per cent to 5,281 units, enough to claim slightly better than 1 per cent of the overall market. No van faded faster in Q1 than the Toyota Sienna. Toyota’s brand-wide 5-per-cent year-over-year growth occurred primarily due to one model, the Canadian-made RAV4, without which Toyota was actually down 19 per cent.

Though clearly Toyota — like many other brands in Canada — continues to be hindered by inventory woes, manufacturers are also clearly de-emphasizing minivans as consumer tastes change. The Sienna’s 74-per-cent Q1 drop translates to more than 500 lost Sienna sales per month.

Car: Honda Civic — 4,000, down 43 per cent

There are passenger cars that posted worse year-over-year percentage losses to kick off 2023, including Honda’s own Accord. Differentiating the Civic is the fact that no car actually suffered a more disastrous unit loss.

Year-over-year, first-quarter Civic volume dropped by 2,968 sales. And let’s be honest, 2022 was not a positive year for the Canadian-built Civic to begin with. Not only did it end as the first year since 1997 that the Civic wasn’t Canada’s best-selling car, but Q1 volume in 2022 was already down 51 per cent from pre-pandemic levels.