Canada's best-selling cars, trucks, SUVs, auto brands in 2025 – driving.ca
In 2025, 1.9 million new vehicles sold in Canada; check out the most popular nameplates
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In the panic that ensued following the rise of trade war threats one year ago, few thought it possible that Canada’s auto market would end the year, well, exactly the same as it began.
Oh, sure, there was modest growth, as 2025 ended with the best results since 2019. There were regulatory moves – such as the elimination of Canada’s federal EV rebates – that required dramatic product planning alterations. And there certainly were trade war implications, including the removal of a number of vehicles from the Canadian marketplace.
Yet at a high-level view, the 1.9 million new vehicles sold in Canada in 2025 – including 20% market share for pickups, booming Hyundai-Kia numbers, and a downtrodden Stellantis – was directly in line with where expectations were had there not been any tariff panic at all. Somehow, even though the recipe changed, the same cake was baked.
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Don’t act surprised. The Canadian auto market is historically really quite resilient. Truly awful years, such as 2009 and 2020, aren’t actually marked by massive collapses but rather brief and generally tolerable downturns. (2009 volume was only off the pace of the prior half-decade by 10%; by 2020’s fourth-quarter, sales were down only 6% from the prior year’s pace.)
Yes, even in the worst of times, Canadians will buy new vehicles. Which ones will they buy? We’ve compiled lists of 2025’s best-selling auto brands, pickup trucks, SUVs, and passenger cars. The names will be familiar.
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Auto sales in 2025 grew marginally from 2024 levels to a six-year high, nearly matching the output from 2019. The top five brands generate very nearly half of all auto sales in Canada.
No longer able to keep pace with Hyundai, Honda held a 24,079-unit gap over next-best Nissan to hold onto its position among the top five brands. Honda sells Canada’s second-best-selling SUV and best-selling car, a duo that accounts for more than two-thirds of the brand’s sales. But Honda also posted improved numbers of almost every other vehicle in its lineup in 2025: Accord, HR-V, Odyssey, Passport, Pilot, and Prologue.
Eleven years after topping 138,000 units in a record-setting 2014, Hyundai exploded to new highs in 2025 with huge gains from the Tucson, Elantra, Venue, and Palisade. Hyundai’s climb to nearly 150,000 units came as the brand’s EVs – a story oft-repeated by other marques – took one on the chin following the demise of Canada’s federal EV rebates. Hyundai’s EVs tumbled 48%, a loss of more than 12,000 units.
Unique among top-selling auto brands due to its year-over-year decline, Chevrolet nevertheless managed to be part of something bigger: General Motors was Canada’s top-selling automaker overall courtesy of record GMC and Cadillac sales and a 23-year Buick high. Chevrolet’s mild downturn masks plenty of high points, including a 6% pickup truck sales improvement.
In the brand’s highest-volume year ever, Toyota generated almost half of its sales via hybrid powertrains. Toyota actually builds more vehicles in Canada than any other manufacturer – Canadian production at the company’s plants actually grew slightly to 537,518 units in 2025. Although sales of its best-selling RAV4 dipped slightly, Toyota offset those marginal losses with record sales from numerous models, including the Tacoma (Canada’s top-selling non-full-size truck) and Sienna (Canada’s best-selling minivan). Meanwhile, Toyota’s premium offshoot, Lexus, also broke its own Canadian sales record.
While bolstered primarily by the No.1 vehicle line on the continent – that’d be the F-Series pickup range – Ford has a number of other key overachievers. One such overachiever is the Ford Escape, which jumped 6% in 2025, the year in which it was killed off by Ford. The other is Ford’s most affordable vehicle, the Maverick pickup, sales of which nearly doubled. Together, the Maverick, F-Series, and Ranger pickup combined for Ford Canada’s best-ever year of truck sales.
Pickup trucks account for one out of every five new vehicle sales in Canada. Of the nearly 378,000 pickups sold in Canada in 2025, 83% were full-size trucks.
If you’re hoping to find a recipe for success, try starting with the most affordable and most fuel efficient pickup on the market. The Ford Maverick isn’t for everyone – most Canadian truck shoppers choose full-size, after all – but more and more Canadians are choosing Maverick over other small/midsize alternatives. In fact, the Maverick fell only 488 units short of becoming Canada’s best-selling small/midsize pickup in 2025.
In order to hold onto its crown as Canada’s favourite non-full-size pickup, the Tacoma needed big things in 2025. Toyota delivered, with a record year for the Tacoma. Hybrids accounted for nearly one-fifth of Tacoma sales, up from one-tenth in 2024. Tacoma market share in the small/midsize category now stands at 25.6%, up four points from 2024 levels.
This is a downfall worth studying. After selling more than 80,000 pickups every year between 2013 and 2020, Ram’s truck lineup has now fallen by more than half – 57% – since the 2017 high-water mark. Given the rude health of the full-size truck market overall, the decline in Ram market share is – without dramatizing – quite astonishing. As recently as 2020, Ram owned 26% of the full-size truck market. And in 2025? Just 14%.
General Motors pumped out enough EVs to produce Cadillac’s best ever year and enough utility vehicles for Buick’s best year since 2002. Plus, GM midsize SUVs jumped 70%. But pickup trucks, full-size pickups in particular, are the high-volume money-makers at GM. It’s this duo – 59,962 Sierras and 54,068 Silverados, not including electric offshoots – that produces nearly four out of every 10 sales at GM Canada, 2.5 times the volume of Buick and Cadillac combined.
A 3% increase might not sound all that significant, but at this volume level, it amounts to quantifiable improvement at the showroom level. Ford added 4,613 F-Series sales to its ledger in 2025 and reported a six-year high in full-size truck sales. The F-Series truck line, on its own, outsold almost every auto brand operating in Canada, including major players such as Honda, Nissan, and GMC.
As more and more automakers move away from the traditional passenger car market, those which remain stand to benefit. This is particularly true in the more affordable compact car category, in which all of the best-selling cars compete.
The Mazda3 sedan and hatchback are no longer required to do the heavy lifting for Mazda, but 2025’s contribution from the 3 lineup was nevertheless better than it’s been since pre-pandemic 2019. Gone are the days when Mazda rose and fell with the 3 – this car was responsible for 61% of Mazda Canada sales 15 years ago; only 17% in 2025. But as a supporting cast member, the 3 remains a meaningful player, both in Canada’s compact car category and in Mazda showrooms.
There’s no Beetle, no Passat, no Golf wagons, and no ordinary Golfs to speak of whatsoever. Volkswagen’s passenger car lineup now consists of performance-oriented Golfs – 5,671 GTIs and Rs were sold in 2025 – and Jettas. The Taos and Tiguan are now the brand’s two top sellers, but the Jetta is reasserting itself, too. The 15,859 units sold in 2025 marks the nameplate’s best year since 2019, when 17,260 Jettas were sold.
In a record year for Hyundai Canada, the Hyundai Elantra did not break its own Canadian sales record. Not even close. However, the Elantra’s bounceback played a key role in propelling Hyundai toward new highs, even if those highs now relate more to the success of vehicles such as the Tucson and Kona rather than the Elantra and Sonata.
Since first topping Canada’s passenger car leaderboard in 2022 (and repeating in 2023), Canadian sales of the Toyota Corolla have fallen 24%. The Corolla’s decline appears to have had little impact on Toyota’s fortunes – 2025 was the brand’s best year yet in Canada, in part due to the success of a different Corolla. Sales of the Corolla Cross rose 15% in 2025.
Honda’s 11th-generation Civic offers up 2025 as proof that 2024 was not merely a lucky rebound. Toyota upended the traditional ruling order when the Corolla took over as Canada’s best-selling car in 2022 – the Civic had held the crown for 24 consecutive years. During Honda’s current two-year streak, Civic sales totalled 62,828 units. Just how much has the Canadian car market changed? In 2018 – just in 2018 alone – Honda sold 69,005 Civics.
SUVs and crossovers form the heart of the Canadian auto industry, not only from a sales perspective but also in terms of manufacturing. Canada’s two best-selling utility vehicles – plus the Lexus RX and NX, two of Canada’s top-selling premium utility vehicles – are assembled in southern Ontario.
With a booming fourth-quarter to cap off the year – October-to-December sales jumped 41% – the Rogue couldn’t keep pace with the Hyundai Tucson but made moderate headway against the two best-selling SUVs in Canada. Nissan’s active incentive structure, often utilizing low APR short-term leases, kept Rogue interest high in 2025. In 2026, Nissan will hope to interest more buyers with the addition of a plug-in hybrid offering.
Maintaining operations with not one but two generations of a subcompact crossover worked wonders for Nissan’s volume in 2025. Nissan sold 18,470 copies of the old Kicks plus 22,486 copies of the new Kicks, enough to make the Kicks Nissan’s top-selling model and Canada’s favourite subcompact utility vehicle. Now, can Nissan maintain this momentum as the old Kicks Play is removed from the market for 2026?
Up two spots from fifth in 2025, the Tucson breaks its annual record in style. Not by a smidgen, Tucson volume exploded compared with 2024, surging ahead with an additional 12,003 units at a Hyundai brand that added just over 14,000 units. The Tucson is part of a Hyundai utility vehicle lineup that jumped 22% to more than 110,000 units.
Honda’s Alliston-assembled CR-V may not be the most exciting, most powerful, or most eye-catching small SUV on the market. On the other hand, time spent in the CR-V reveals virtually nothing to complain about, either. 2025 marked the third year for the sixth-generation CR-V, which originally launched in Canada as a 1997 model.
Though it was 1,983 sales off of 2024’s record pace, the Toyota RAV4 still dominated the Canadian SUV sales race in the final year of its fifth generation. The RAV4 has become a license to print money for Toyota dealers, even when supply is anything but plentiful. Toyota sold RAV4s of all types in 2025, with a 65/35 ICE/hybrid split, and with roughly one-fifth of the hybrids being PHEVs.
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