Canada's Number One Vehicle

Hello everybody, first off welcome to my blog where I will be discussing relative news from the automotive industry and of course some of my personal opinions. The goal is to not regergitate information from headlines but rathe rot shed some insight on topics that affect and are somewhat important to Canada among the industry.

www.autoguide.com - Honda Civic vs. Hyundai Elantra - Canada's Top Car 

Since we have just begun the month of February, and with the new year behind us I felt it was appropriate to discuss and write about Canada's top car in 2013. Surprisingly this information is actually quite difficult to find online as almost all car manufacturers with some sort of Canadian presence will claim they have Canada's top car. This is caused mainly to how the success of the car is measured, whether its; units sold, units owned to date, annual revenues for a particular car, and to make things more difficult it can even be broke down further into car class (sports, compact, crossover, etc.).

I decided to take a modest and least judgemental approach as possible and came up with two reasonable top contenders for 2013 being the Honda Civic and the Hyundai Elantra. Both being compact cars, that offer similar features and are without a doubt the most popular cars on the road, so popular that I bet if you look out your window, or walk through a parking lot you will spot both these vehicles within seconds in almost all areas of Canada.

The Elantra is a fairly new model to Canada coming from the Korean manufacturer and has really increased and changed Hyundai's appearance to many Canadians from not being a manufacturer or quality in the 70's 80's and into the 90's to being comparative in terms of reliability against Japanese manufacturers such as Honda, and Nissan. Hyundai experienced 36.1% increase in 2013 Elantra sales and sold just below 60,000 units across Canada which may sound low but in the current economy state it is a respectable number. In June, July, and August there were multiple articles written by the Globe and Mail reporting that Hyundai had the highest number of sales throughout the year up to that point and projections stating the Elantra will likely become Canada's top car of 2013, Honda seemed to have different thoughts about this as the year progressed.

The Honda Civic is a very popular car that has been well known for quality, reliability, and affordability among Canadians for many years now, dating back to the late 80's. Prior to 2013's year end, the Civic had claimed Canada's number one selling car for the previous 15 years, each year outselling any other competing vehicle offered on the market. The Civic to date has been through three "generations" or improvement phases in the last 9 years alone, truly showing Honda's ability to utilise core competencies and innovation. One huge advantage the Civic has when compared to the Elantra is the simple ability to be upgraded and as a result appeals to many different segments. Civics come in 4 different packages that all have different aspects from the DX being the base model with no features, to the LX being slightly more fun higher quality interior and a sunroof, the EX which is an upgrade of leather seats, power everything, sunroof, and upgraded audio package, and the Si which is Honda's famous DOHC VTec 2.1l engine offering performance capabilities out of the Civic. In addition to all this the Civic is offered in Coupes and Sedans making them that much more appealing to the Elantras.

With all this said, I'm sure you can image who Canada's best selling car goes to... Of course its the Honda Civic for the 16th consecutive year that takes the cake for 2013. Honda sold a grand total of 66,063 Civics in total last year, surpassing their closest competitor by 9,303 units by year end, and has even introduced a new generation of Civics for 2014, Hyundai has their work cut out for them this year... Go Honda!