10 Best-selling Canadian-made cars in 2024 (2024)

Does your vehicle’s VIN start with a 2? Just ahead of your steering wheel but visible only through your windshield — or along the inside of the door jamb on the driver’s side, or under the hood in front of the engine — you’ll find a 17-character alphanumeric Vehicle Identification Number, or VIN. If the first character in the VIN is a 2, your vehicle was assembled right here in Canada.

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Automotive production remains big business in Canada. The Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association says vehicles were Canada’s second-largest goods export in 2022. At $38.3 billion, automobiles accounted for 8 per cent of the country’s export value, generated by 125,000 people who are directly employed in vehicle production.

Honda announced in April a $15 billion investment in the future of the auto industry, joining multi-billion-dollar investments from General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and Stellantis over the last four years. These investments won’t flick a switch that turns back the clock to a prior production era — automakers built 2.5 million vehicles in Canada in 2012; 1 million more than the same manufacturers built in 2023.

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We’ve compiled a list of the nameplates that are currently made in Canada and cross-referenced this group of 10 vehicles with sales figures from calendar year 2023, as well as the first-quarter of 2024.

Keep in mind, we’re reporting the total sales figures for these models, but there are some vehicles that generate Canadian sales volume from vehicles built in other areas. For example, there are likely Chevrolet Silverados in your local dealer’s inventory with VINs beginning with 1, 2, 3: Silverados from U.S., Canadian, and Mexican factories.

Chevrolet Silverado: 53,266, down 0.01 per cent

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General Motors builds its full-size pickups in a variety of locations across the continent: Flint, Michigan; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Silao, Guanajuato; and Oshawa, Ontario. The Oshawa plant is Silverado-only; no GMC Sierras. GM’s Canadian dealers sold 53,266 Silverados in 2023; on par with 2022 output. First-quarter volume in 2024 slipped 2 per cent to 13,042 units, albeit 13,042 units from a handful of factories, not just the Oshawa, Ontario facility.

Chrysler Pacifica: 6,994, down 9 per cent

Tops in the minivan category in 2023 despite a 9% slide, the Chrysler Pacifica continues a longstanding tradition for Windsor-built minivans. Granted, the Pacifica’s not doing so at the sky-high levels of previous-generation Dodge Grand Caravans. Chrysler dealers, as recently as 2016, delivered more than 50,000 Grand Caravans, admittedly at a very different price point. Pacifica sales slipped 40 per cent to 782 units in the first-quarter of 2024.

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Chrysler Grand Caravan: 2,013, down 45 per cent

Minivan sales have slowed to a trickle, and perhaps there’s no piece of evidence that clarifies that more succinctly than a Chrysler Grand Caravan that produces fewer sales in an entire calendar year than the Dodge Grand Caravan produced per fortnight in 2006. Only 609 Chrysler Grand Caravans were sold in the first-quarter of 2024.

Ford Edge: 14,008, up 6 per cent

The Oakville-Ontario-built Ford Edge never seems to be the Ford SUV that generates the headlines. The Escape is the historic top-seller, the Explorer is the long-established nameplate, the Bronco is the off-road icon. But the Edge is a consistent producer of volume, year after year after year. During the 10-year period from 2010 to pre-pandemic 2019, Ford Canada averaged 18,280 Edge sales per year, only falling below the 17K mark twice during that period. Along with the market, Edge sales plummeted during the pandemic but in 2023 were 18% higher than the nameplate’s lowpoint.

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Honda Civic: 27,703, down 6 per cent

Honda Canada’s Civic tradition is not a recent one. Honda began building Civics in Alliston, Ontario, when Brian Mulroney was in office. In fact, it was five years before he left office. Up until 2022, the Civic was the best-selling car in Canada for 24 consecutive years. (The Toyota Corolla, which was a made-in-Canada car for over three decades, earned that title in each of the last two years.) Civic production and sales have fallen sharply over the last few years but are showing signs of recovery — first-quarter sales jumped 66 per cent to 6,631 units.

Honda CR-V: 52,146, up 62 per cent

Honda Canada’s Alliston, Ontario, facilities built 374,467 vehicles in 2023. Of those, 54 per cent vehicles were CR-Vs; 46 per cent were Civics. But in terms of Canadian content sold at Honda Canada’s dealers, the mix was not nearly so balanced. The CR-V, Canada’s second-best-selling SUV/crossover, accounted for 65 per cent of Honda’s CR-V/Civic sales mix in 2023. CR-V sales jumped forward in early 2024, as well, with a 114 per cent leap to 12,606 units in Q1.

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Lexus NX: 10,800, up 15 per cent

The Lexus NX isn’t just a popular SUV vehicle in terms of premium brand utilities, it’s popular in a mainstream context, as well. The NX, which produced 52 per cent of its 2023 Canadian sales from its hybrid variants, outsold popular volume-brand vehicles such as the Mazda CX-30, Ford Explorer, Subaru Forester, Nissan Pathfinder, Honda Pilot, and Kia Sorento. The NX and NX Hybrid are both built in Cambridge, Ontario. Q1 sales in 2024 fell 24 per cent to 2,184 units.

Lexus RX: 11,169, up 21 per cent

Narrowly outsold by the Audi Q5 at the top of Canada’s luxury utility vehicle sales charts in 2023, the Cambridge-built Lexus RX is one of the original premium crossovers. In a market that was still largely focused on traditional body-on-frame SUVs, Lexus launched the RX in 1998 on a unibody chassis with futuristic styling and unexpected refinement. Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada Inc. began building the RX in 2003. In the first-quarter of 2024, RX sales slipped 25 per cent to 2,071 units.

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Lincoln Nautilus: 2,189, up 1 per cent

Built in Oakville, Ontario, alongside its Ford Edge platform partner, the Lincoln Nautilus is the Edge’s upmarket sibling. The Nautilus formerly operated as the MKX. In a four-SUV lineup featuring the smaller Corsair, three-row Aviator, and full-size Navigator, the Nautilus/MKX has typically been the brand’s best seller. The Aviator is imported from Chicago; the Navigator and Corsair come from Louisville, Kentucky.

Toyota RAV4: 74,688, up 34 per cent

Toyota built nearly 1,000 RAV4s per day in Canada with production occurring in Woodstock and Cambridge, Ontario. Toyota began building RAV4s in Canada in 2008. The RAV4 became Canada’s best-selling utility vehicle in 2016 and hasn’t surrendered the top spot since. In 2023, the RAV4 produced 38,949 of its 74,688 sales with hybrid and plug-in hybrid iterations. First-quarter volume in 2024 jumped 23 per cent to 20,397 units.