O Canada! Ford’s No. 1

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Our neighbors to the north are known for their impeccable manners, searing slapshots and driveways filled with General Motors sedans with bench seats and snow tires.

Not anymore.

For the first time in more than half a century, Canadians bought more Fords than GM vehicles last month.

Despite a market as weak as the one the U.S. is enduring, Ford dealers moved 27,408 cars and light trucks in Canada in June, according to numbers released today. That’s a 24.6% increase compared with June of last year, a truly shocking result considering what has been happening to the auto business.

Bankrupt GM, which has been the sales leader in Canada since time immemorial, saw its June sales in the Great White North drop 31% on a year-over-year basis to 22,334 units.

Chrysler, the other bankrupt U.S. automaker, meanwhile suffered an even greater decline, selling just 9,211 vehicles in Canada, a nearly 59% drop compared with last year. It blamed a company-wide production shutdown that limited inventories.

Ford has been building cars in Canada for 105 years and currently operates two assembly plants there, yet has been an also-ran to GM for decades. Not surprisingly, executives in the company’s Oakville, Ontario, headquarters reveled in the victory.

‘This is a historic day for Ford in Canada,’ David Mondragon, Ford Canada’s president and Chief Executive. Just yesterday (Canada Day, by the way), Ford reported that its U.S. sales in June declined only 11%, by far the best result posted by any major automaker and sufficient for it to fend off Toyota for the No. 2 slot in sales here for the third month in a row, behind GM.

Particularly cheering for Ford executives in the land of Tim Horton’s was the fact that much of the sales lift came from trucks, about the most profitable thing a car company makes.

While GM’s truck sales declined nearly 20%, Ford saw a 36% rise in truck sales, including a 50% rise in sales of the Ranger light pickup and a whopping 59% uptick for the F-150 pickup.

And now, a gratuitous joke about Canada:

Q. What does a Canadian say when you step on his foot?

Q. ‘Sorry.’

--Ken Bensinger