Traditional premium auto brands saw their Canadian market share fall by a full percentage point in 2024. For much of the year, the biggest luxury marques couldn’t maintain the prior year’s sales pace even as the industry overall pushed forward to normal sales levels.
Auto sales in Canada grew by nearly 9% in 2024 – an increase of roughly 150,000 units – even as premium auto brands ever so slightly outperformed 2023 levels. Of the new vehicles sold, 11% wore established premium badges. (Brands such as Tesla are excluded from the conversation as they fail to report monthly/quarterly market-specific sales figures. Tesla, according to estimates, sold in the vicinity of 45,000 new vehicles in Canada last year.)
Yet while many of the biggest names in the luxury auto sphere succumbed to the headwinds of high interest rates, Tesla expansion, and inflationary pressures, a group of brands once thought to be niche players made major moves. That group includes three former members of Ford’s Premier Automotive Group. And no, we don’t mean Mercury.
Canada’s 10 best-selling premium auto brands in 2024
10. Land Rover: 8,949, up 21%
Land Rover’s 8,949-unit total in calendar year 2024 marks a five-year high for the British SUV brand. Land Rover pushed three models into four-digit territory, with the leading Defender up 37% to 2,839 units. Land Rover’s four-pronged Range Rover lineup generates 6 out of every 10 Canadian sales for the brand. Land Rover’s Jaguar partner, meanwhile, sold just 1,272 vehicles in 2024.
9. Lincoln: 9,078, up 36%
Two decades ago, Ford’s Lincoln division typically pumped out only around 4,700 vehicles per year. A decade go, Lincoln averaged around 6,900 Canadian sales per year. Pre-pandemic, in 2019, Lincoln climbed to 8,679 sales in 2019 before succumbing to the many industry challenges and averaging 7,200 annual sales between 2020 and 2023. Though ranked ninth, Lincoln’s 9,078-unit tally from calendar year 2024 is actually a noteworthy achievement for a brand that, to be honest, doesn’t have much of a lineup. Four utility vehicle nameplates – one discontinued – produced sales for Lincoln in 2024. The brand’s best seller, a Ford Edge-based Nautilus with 3,351 sales, is that discontinued model.
8. Porsche: 10,374, down 3%
Two-hundred seventy units. Only 270. Just 270 Boxsters, Caymans, 911s, Panameras, Taycans, Macans, and Cayennes. That’s the scant difference between Porsche’s Canadian output in 2023 – its best year ever – and Porsche’s Canadian output in 2024. Speaking of records, 2024 was in fact a record for Porsche’s most famous model, the 911. Sales of the legendary sports car rose 9% to 2,208 units.
7. Acura: 11,981, down 1%
Once a consistently powerful brand in the Canadian semi-premium landscape, Acura has fallen from grace. And it’s fallen fast. In the five pre-pandemic years – 2015-2019 – Honda’s upmarket division averaged 20,330 annual sales. Acura is now more than 40% below that level having failed to harness any momentum with the reborn Integra (down 27% to only 840 units in 2024). The bright hope now takes the shape of the small ADX SUV which, based on the arrival timelines of Acura’s rival, should have been here 5 or 10 years ago.
6. Volvo: 13,404, up 4%
Bolstered by 6,178 EV and PHEV sales, Geely-owned and Gothenburg-based Volvo is boasting its best year ever in Canada. As expected, the XC60 that sits at the heart of Volvo’s lineup does much of the work for the brand – its 4,690 sales account for just over one-third of all Volvo sales in Canada.
5. Cadillac: 16,560, up 7%
Like Volvo, General Motors is reporting its highest-volume year ever for the Cadillac brand. (GM also reported a best-ever year for the GMC brand.) Cadillac doesn’t make much of a dent with its cars (only 402 CT4s were sold and only 926 CT5s for a combined 18% drop) but the discontinued XT4 small SUV and new Lyriq electric SUV produced major volume for the brand. XT4 sales rose 10% to 4,464 units, enough to make it Cadillac’s No.1 model in Canada even as it approached the end of the line. The Lyriq is Cadillac’s No.2 model with 3,556 units.
4. Mercedes-Benz: 28,076, down 3%
While well ahead of fifth-ranked Cadillac, Mercedes-Benz’s fourth-place finish isn’t actually terribly far off the leaders. The top-ranked premium brand averaged roughly 460 more sales per month than the three-pointed star. Mercedes-Benz’s 28,076-unit tally excludes commercial vans, 6,408 of which were sold in 2024. (The Sprinter ranks third in overall Mercedes-Benz sales in Canada.) The GLC and GLE utility vehicles top the Benz charts with 7,004 and 6,266 sales, respectively, year-over-year increases of 3% and 15%. Aside from those two models, Mercedes-Benz sales were down 12% compared with 2023.
3. Lexus: 29,704, down 5%
After Lexus output climbed to a record-setting 31,199 units in 2023, the year-over-year decline for Toyota’s premium division was actually the worst of any top 10 brand. The culprits: significant declines from the brand’s two best-selling models, which just so happen to be Canadian-made. Lexus NX volume fell 15% to 9,196 units; the RX was down 7% to 10,387.
2. BMW: 30,623, down 1%
Modest upticks in sales of the brand’s best-selling X3, the electric i Series models, and the 4 Series were not quite enough to offset sharp declines in other areas of the BMW lineup. BMW 3 Series sales, for example, tumbled 37%, and X1 volume tumbled 18%. BMW did manage to cap the year off with a strong finish – fourth-quarter volume jumped 11% despite a 55% slide from the 3 Series, a car that BMW relied on for nearly one-third of its volume just one decade ago.
1. Audi: 33,644, down 4%
A decade ago, when Mercedes-Benz topped Canada’s premium brand sales chart, Audi trailed by nearly 10,000 units. Two decades ago, Acura was actually selling three times as many vehicles as Audi. In 2024, however, Audi was a controlling force, thanks primarily to an array of small premium utility vehicles: Q3, Q4 e-tron, and the best-selling Q5. Combined, that trio alone produced 22,675 units, more than every premium brand outside the top four.
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