Gas prices in Canada flirted with near record highs a couple of weeks, ago, and they're only barely below that level now. We're paying around $1.30 CAD per liter -- roughly $5 USD per US gallon.
Canadians have long had a love affair with sensible sub-compact & compact cars. Much more so than Americans, for a variety of reasons. But recent numbers show a trend going in the other direction.
Comparing the first half of 2013 to the first half of 2012 ...
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... subcompact sales in Canada have plunged 13.6 per cent. By the way, compact car sales in Canada are up a piddling 1.2 per cent.
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Compare that to trucks:
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pickup trucks (up 14 per cent), large luxury sport-utilities (up 18.6 per cent) and compact sport-utes (luxurious ones up 18 per cent, regular ones up 10 per cent.
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Yikes.
Full article: "Gas prices are high, and Canadians are buying... more large trucks?" ...
Gas prices are high, and Canadians are buying... more large trucks? - The Globe and Mail
(That link will probably only be available for a few weeks until it disappears behind the paywall.)
Why?
Probably because credit is so cheap these days -- in the past few years, Canadians for the first time have surpassed our American cousins in the amount of personal debt they carry as a ratio vs. disposable income. And cheap money can cause people to buy what they want, rather than what they need.
Also, gas prices have more or less
crept up, rather than
surged up, during the recovery from the financial crisis. People tend to respond less to gradual increases than sudden spikes. (Frog in the pot of boiling water story, anyone?)
It's an interesting development, anyway.