RICHMOND HILL, Ontario -

In what has been an up-and-down rollercoaster kind of year for the Canadian auto market, August continued the streak of unpredictable, volatile car sales, according to DesRosiers Automotive Consultants.

After falling 5 percent in July, the new-vehicle market was up 3.2 percent during August, the firm explained. While the 140,361 sales were stronger than year-ago figures, the market still has a long way to climb.

“Last month sales were down, the month before sales were up, the month before that sales were down. This is a very difficult market to predict. The fundamentals all point to some modest sales growth, but the volatility makes all forecasts difficult,” said company president Dennis DesRosiers.

“Although sales were strong in August they were still below levels achieved between 2005 to 2008, so Canada is still quite far from being a very healthy light vehicle market,” he added.

To illustrate this, DesRosiers points to the seasonally adjusted annualized rate for new-car sales in August. The SAAR dropped for the second straight month, coming in at 1.57 million units after hitting 1.67 million in June.

Year-to-date sales through August have hit 1.09 million units, a 1.7-percent hike.

Delving into a breakdown of individual automakers, the Big 3 showed big strides in August. Chrysler jumped 16.6 percent with 18,737 units sold, Ford saw a 7.9-percent lift with 25,920 sales and General Motors moved 25,045 units, a 6.4-percent improvement, according to the data DesRosiers offered.

The Big 3 as a whole saw a 9.5-percent uptick and imports dipped 2.4 percent

Several Japanese automakers continued to face hurdles. Honda/Acura sales were off 26.4 percent at 9,509 units and Mazda slid 12.8 percent with 6,528 sales.

Suzuki moved 444 units, a 55.8-percent decrease and Subaru sold 1,863 units for a 20-percent dip.

“Toyota has had a dreadful year but their sales in August were up by 10.3 percent,” DesRosiers said of the Toyota brand, which moved 12,806 units in August. The Lexus brand sold 1,206 units for a 3.6-percent decline.

Breaking it down by segment, there were 79,589 truck sales, up 5.8 percent year-over-year. Interestingly enough, trucks beat out cars even in the midst of high gas prices, he pointed out. Car sales totaled 60,772, a 0.1-percent decrease.

Moving along, DesRosiers went on to offer a bit of a silver lining and put things into perspective.

“All these sales trends may be fleeting, though, in that this is a very unusual year. The Japanese have had serious availability issues post the tsunami and you have to believe that they will rebound, at least to a degree, as their supply of vehicles get back to more normal levels,” he noted.

“On that point, most Japanese OEMs tell us that everything is close to being back to normal or at least should be within a matter of weeks. Added to the supply issue have been labor disruptions through the west coast ports which have hampered all Asian vehicles flowing into Canada including the Koreans,” DesRosiers continued.

He went on to note that despite Canada’s economy being healthier than that of its southern neighbors, the bottom third of Canada’s market are still experiencing some big challenges. As such, the car side of the market has been downwardly affected.

“These consumers tend to be the passenger car buyers and this is one of the reasons those segments are underperforming. We also know that fleet sales in 2008 and 2009 were abnormally low and that this year fleets sales are abnormally high and this can’t continue,” he added.

DesRosiers pointed out that the growth in the Canada’s new-car sales is entirely attributable to fleet sales.

So, in reality, the retail side of the market is weaker.

“Detroit dominates fleet sales and this is one of the reasons they have taken market share from the import nameplates. And finally there are still positive implications for the Detroit three from the Government and labor help they received during 2008 and 2009 and this is another reason they outperform the market,” he added. “So although the trends emerging this year are very real and can be well documented, I think we need to wait another year or maybe two to see whether they are sustainable in the medium to long term.”