RICHMOND HILL, Ontario -

Canadian new-vehicle sales began the year in rather respectable fashion, according to analyst Dennis DesRosiers, who said he could even go as far as to say that the opening month of 2011 was “surprisingly positive,” in light of the potential impact that existed from the flood of incentives at the end of 2010.

Based on preliminary numbers, DesRosiers said earlier this week that new-vehicle sales in Canada hit 84,509 units in January, up 3.6 percent year-over-year.

“It was a decent start to the year and given the amount of incentive dollars at the end of 2010, I could argue that these sales represent a surprisingly positive start to the year,” DesRosiers noted. “What incentive dollars do is bring vehicle sales forward and late last year a number of OEMs put huge money on vehicles in an effort to have sales booked into 2010 instead of 2011.

“Given this, we would have expected a weak January,” he continued. “It didn’t happen, although incentive money in January was still high, so many OEMs are still playing the game.”

Despite some perhaps unexpected strength, sales were still quite soft compared to what is typical for January, DesRosiers noted. The seasonally adjusted annualized rate for January new-vehicle sales was 1.48 million units, a rather sluggish pace against the usual tempo for this month.

Moving along, DesRosiers spotted some particularly strong results from the Big 3 during January. Big 3 sales jumped 10.9 percent from January 2010 as those OEMs moved 42,386 units for the month.

Meanwhile, import brands sold 42,123 units, a 2.9-percent decrease.

“This continues a year-long streak of Detroit brands taking market share from import brands,” he noted. “Last April the D-3 collectively outsold the import nameplates for the first time in more than a decade and with these January sales the D-3 now have out sold import nameplates for 10 months in a row."

Trucks have been the driver to the Big 3’s fortitude, DesRosiers pointed out. Overall, Big 3 and import truck sales in Canada hit 52,390 units during January, marking a 13.2-percent hike year-over-year.

Car sales fell 9 percent to 32,119 units.

Breaking January sales down by automaker, General Motors — with 14,552 vehicles sold — took back its perch as Canada’s top seller, replacing Ford, which sold 14,314 units. Interestingly enough, GM was actually down 1.8 percent from a year ago while Ford showed a 24-percent year-over-year gain.

Among the “huge winners” DesRosiers cited were Porsche, whose sales climbed 52.1 percent, and Mitsubishi, which improved 29.9 percent. He also touted Audi (up 29 percent), Kia (up 26.2 percent) and Ford, in addition to Volkswagen (22.7-percent improvement), BMW (14.6-percent gain) and Chrysler (14.1-percent gain).

Honda/Acura was Canada’s “most serious under-performing OEM” as their sales dropped 36.8 percent, according to DesRosiers. He also cited double-digit sales declines for Suzuki, Nissan/Infiniti and Mazda.