July Auto Sales Rise Again, But Recovery Stays Fragile
TLDR: Canadian new vehicle sales reached 173,000 units in July, up 0.5% from July 2025, the second consecutive month of year-over-year growth after eight straight months of declines, according to DesRosiers Automotive Consultants.
- It was the best July since 2019, though still well short of the 182,000 units sold in July 2017, and the seasonally adjusted annual rate hit 1.90 million units, its highest since February
- Wholesale vehicle values fell just 0.16% for the week, an improvement on the prior week’s 0.32% decline, but the segment picture was mixed: vans dropped the hardest while mid-size cars gained, per Canadian Black Book
- Roughly 169,000 vehicles sat on Canadian dealer lots at an average retail asking price of $36,900
- Household spending pressure from tariff uncertainty and geopolitical strain is also weighing on demand, not a single cause dealers can plan around
- A stocking decision made on this month’s numbers is a bet on which of those two data points, sales or wholesale, is the more reliable signal
A dealer principal setting September stock orders this week has two numbers in front of them that do not agree. New vehicle sales are up. Wholesale values are still down. Both are true at the same time, and the gap between them is the story.
The Numbers
Canadian new vehicle sales reached 173,000 units in July, up 0.5% from the 172,000 units sold in July 2025, DesRosiers Automotive Consultants reported in its monthly release. That is the second consecutive month of year-over-year growth, following a 1.9% gain in June, and it ends an eight-month stretch of declines. The seasonally adjusted annual rate climbed to 1.90 million units, the highest reading since February.
“In normal times a gain of 0.5% would perhaps not be worthy of mention,” DAC managing partner Andrew King said, “but these are not normal times for the auto industry and we will take whatever good news we can get.” King noted the market remains well off its prior peak: July’s 173,000 units compare to 182,000 in July 2017, even as they mark the strongest July result in seven years, since 174,000 units in 2019.
A Softer Signal Underneath
The sales number describes what buyers did last month. Wholesale pricing describes what dealers expect buyers to do next. For the week tracked by Canadian Black Book, overall wholesale values fell 0.16%, an improvement over the 0.32% decline the week before, but still a decline. Car segments slipped 0.17% and trucks and SUVs slipped 0.15%. The moves inside those categories were not uniform. Mid-size cars rose 0.53% and subcompact crossovers gained 0.40%, while compact vans fell 1.18% and full-size vans dropped 0.99%. Just over 45% of tracked segments moved by more than $100 in either direction, a sign the market is still repricing rather than settling.
Roughly 169,000 vehicles were listed on Canadian dealer lots as of that same week, at an average retail asking price of $36,900. Auction sale rates across segments ranged from 10.8% to 86.9%, averaging 46.6%, a wide spread that points to demand concentrated in specific vehicle types rather than lifting the whole market evenly.
Advisor.ca’s coverage of the DAC release attributed part of the household spending pressure behind the softness to tariff uncertainty tied to the ongoing Canada-U.S. trade relationship, layered on top of broader geopolitical strain. Neither factor has resolved, and neither has a clear end date attached to it.
What This Means for Your Dealership
The instinct after two straight months of year-over-year growth is to order up. The wholesale data argues for restraint, or at least for selectivity. A rising sales number and a softening wholesale market are not a contradiction to resolve. They describe a recovery concentrated in certain vehicle types and unevenly distributed across the rest, which means a flat, across-the-board increase in orders risks overbuying exactly the segments where wholesale values are falling fastest, like vans, while underbuying the ones gaining, like mid-size cars and subcompact crossovers.
That argues for stocking by segment performance this month rather than by the headline trend. Review which vehicle types in your own mix track closer to the mid-size car and subcompact crossover gains versus the van declines, and weight incoming orders accordingly rather than treating July’s 0.5% as a green light across the board. The same logic applies on the used side: with wholesale values still repricing week to week, a vehicle acquired today and left on the lot for three or four weeks carries real markdown risk before it ever reaches a customer. Tightening how fast a unit moves from acquisition to frontline matters more in a market like this one than in a stable one, because every extra day of holding is a day of exposure to a price that is still moving. Dealerships evaluating how they source and price used inventory should treat this month’s numbers as a reason to shorten that window, not lengthen it.
READY HUB customers running Inventory tracking already have the acquisition-to-frontline visibility this kind of market rewards. Dealerships without a clear, real-time view of how long units are sitting are the ones most exposed if wholesale values keep drifting the way they did this week. More on how the platform tracks that handoff is available for dealers looking to tighten the process.
Neither DesRosiers nor Canadian Black Book is forecasting a clean trend in either direction for August. Household spending pressure tied to tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty has not resolved, so the safest planning assumption is that July’s gain and this week’s wholesale softening both persist, unevenly, rather than one canceling the other out.