Canada sets record for new vehicle sales in 2015

A prominent auto industryanalyst says preliminary figures showCanada saw another record year in 2015 for the number of new vehicles sold to consumers.

Dennis DesRosiers said 1.898 million new vehicles were sold in Canada in 2015, which he said marked the third consecutive year the country saw a new record set.

"All the stars lined up last year,"DesRosiers told CBC News in aninterview on Tuesday, when describing the contributing factors to sales in Canada in 2015.

DesRosiers said gas prices and interest rates were low, consumers had many new products to choose from and there were a record number of old vehicles on the road that were in need of replacement.

Figures from DesRosiers show thatFiat Chrysler Canada claimed the top sales spot with 293,061 vehicles sold last year, up 1.1 per cent from 2014. Ford Canada, whose annual sales slipped4.6 per cent to278,437, came in second, while third-place General Motors Canada saw its sales climb 5.4 per cent to 263,335.

Sales of light trucks, which include SUVs, minivans and pickup trucks, rose 8.8 per cent over 2014. Sales of cars slipped 6.3 per cent.

Statistics Canada is not slated to release its own figures for December 2015 until February.Its figures for November will come out later this month.

DesRosiers said the statistics agency's total for 2015 will be higher than his own, as he is not counting the sales of somehigh-end, exotic vehicles, as Statistics Canada does.

For the January-to-October period of 2015, Statistics Canada reported the sales of about 1.66 million vehicles, according to data posted on its website.

Record sales in U.S.

It was also a record year for car sales south of the border, preliminary figures show.

U.S. autosales hit an estimated 17.5 million last year, topping the old15-year old record of 17.35 million. Low gasoline prices, a recovering economyand low interest rates are getting the credit for the sales boom. SmallSUVslike the Honda CR-V and the Nissan Roguewere particularly popular this past fall.

GM and Ford were the best-selling brands, while Volkswagen saw sales fall five per cent for the year after it admitted in September that it cheated on U.S. emissions tests of its diesel vehicles.

December will likely turn out to be the biggest-ever Decemberfor the auto industry, with nearly 1.7 million vehicles sold, according to the car shopping site, Edmunds.com.Toyota, Honda and Nissan all reported double-digit sales growth over the previous December.

Kelly Blue Book forecasts that 2016 sales could rise as much as three per cent to 18 million.