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TORONTO, ON — Chrysler Canada claimed the top spot as the best selling automaker in the country for the second consecutive month at the top of the heap.

The company says sales increased nine per cent compared with a year ago and hit their best level for a February since 2002.

“These sales results are a testament to the 16 all-new or significantly refreshed products we introduced over the last year, which focused on improved exteriors, new interiors, and dramatically better fuel efficiency,” Chrysler Canada chief operating officer Dave Buckingham said in a statement.

The increase was helped by a more than doubling of passenger car sales at the automaker. Jeep Wrangler sales also more than doubled compared with a year ago.

Chrysler Canada, which has assembly plants in Windsor and Brampton, Ont., northwest of Toronto, as well as parts operations, said it sold 16,536 cars and trucks sold in February, up from 15,238 in the same month last year.

Meanwhile, GM said it sold 14,258 vehicles in February, up 16 per cent over February 2011, as sales of fuel-efficient crossovers increased significantly compared with a year ago.

Chevrolet Equinox and GMC Terrain sales were up 41.5 per cent.

“For 2012, our dealers have the best and most complete product line up in recent memory, spanning all segments, from the entry level Sonic to the new Canadian-built Cadillac XTS,” said Marc Comeau, vice-president of sales, service and marketing at GM of Canada.

GM’s passenger car sales rose 5.8 per cent in February, helped by strong sales of the Buick Regal, Chevrolet Camaro and Buick LaCrosse, while Chevrolet and GMC pickup trucks sales saw Silverado, and Sierra sales gain seven per cent.

In the U.S., many automakers reported strong sales for February as Americans snapped up smaller cars to offset high gas prices.

Chrysler’s February sales rose 40 per cent from a year earlier as it sold nearly 134,000 new cars and trucks. All of its brands showed at least double-digit increases. Chrysler was helped by an easy comparison with last February, when sales were relatively low because many of its revamped models were just arriving in showrooms.

Ford sales rose 14 per cent, mostly on demand for the Focus compact car. Focus sales more than doubled to 23,350, making it the best February for the Focus in 12 years.

At GM, sales of the Chevrolet Cruze compact rose 10 per cent to top 20,000 for the month, while the new Chevy Sonic subcompact saw its best sales month ever at almost 8,000. The strength of those sales helped General Motors, which was expected to see sales drop, report a 1 per cent increase.

There’s a funny scene in The Forty Year Old Virgin (2005) where Steve Carrell’s character explains to a woman he’s called for a date that he won’t be able to pick her up because he rides a bike. “That’s OK,” she tells him, “I love getting on the back of a motorcycle.” At which point Carrell is forced to clarify: “Yeah... I ride a bicycle.” As it turns out, getting a license is just one of the many rites of passage he’s ducked in putting off adulthood in favour of an extended adolescence.

For as long as families have been able to afford cars, learning to drive has been an initiation rite for North American kids, often a bonding experience between parent and child in which a set of sacred principles is transmitted from elder to younger. Like fathers teaching their sons to shave and mothers teaching their daughters about the “feminine hygiene” aisle at the drugstore, learning to drive is one of the milestones we use to mark the end of childhood. The first passing of the keys is not only a gesture of trust that confers a new level of responsibility but also an acknowledgement of independence that entails a new degree of freedom. And when sons and daughters actually get their first car, they finally have the means to leave the comforts of home behind and to make their own way in the world.

But in many households today, these symbolic rituals are being postponed. In the past year, a number of American news sources reported a similar trend: teenagers are waiting longer to get their licenses. Data from the US Department of Transportation reveals that nearly 45% of American 16-year-olds got driver’s licenses in 1988. Twenty years later, that figure had dropped to just over 30%, with data from certain states showing a continued decline in the past two years. The trend is less pronounced in Canada, where there are far fewer drivers of any age on the road, but the numbers here tell a similar story. In 2009 (the most recent year for which data from Transport Canada is available), there were over 50,000 more drivers aged 16 to 19 than there were in 2003, an increase of nearly 5%. At the same time, however, there were nearly 155,000 more drivers aged 20 to 24, an increase of almost 9%. Demographic changes may partly account for these numbers, but they also suggest that teenagers are no longer streaming into test centres on their first day of eligibility.

One reason for this shift is simple economics. Insurance rates for young drivers are almost always among the highest of all classes, and even with a discount for a good record or a driver’s ed certificate, adding a teenage driver to a policy usually means a significant increase in the premium, an expense many families can ill afford in this economy. Whereas in the past teenagers worked part-time or summer jobs to pay their share of the additional cost, youth unemployment in Canada is currently over 17%, more than double the national average. Couple this with the ever-rising cost of gasoline, a greater sensitivity to the environmental consequences of increased fuel emissions, and staggering tuition debt, and it’s not particularly difficult to see why some young people seem to be rethinking the need to get their licenses and that first car as early as possible.

To a certain extent, investments in infrastructure and public transport in the form of expanded routes and longer service hours have also had an impact, but the single greatest catalyst behind this decline is most likely digital. If American Graffiti has taught us anything, it’s that for past generations the car was an integral component of a teenager’s social life, a means for him or her to get out of the house, meet friends, and cruise the streets like Milner in his ’32 Deuce-coupe or else park for a little necking. But the car no longer occupies this exalted place in the culture. Teenagers now stay “connected” through social networking and endless text messages in coded shorthand. They no longer need to leave their rooms in order to have social lives, at least insofar as whatever happens on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and the rest of the Web passes for a social life.

It’s difficult to say whether it’s a cause or an effect, but a related factor is the trend of arrested development, a kind of juvenilization whereby – far from putting aside childish things – young adults continue to be driven to the mall by their parents so they can spend their allowances on the latest installment of some video-game franchise. Although collision rates in Canada have fallen steadily in the past decade, parents can hardly be blamed for wanting to protect their children by keeping them out of the driver’s seat until they’re mature enough to handle the responsibility. But how are teenagers supposed to mature if parents resist entrusting them with new responsibilities in the first place? Today’s so-called “helicopter” parents, forever hovering over their kids in readiness to swoop in at the first sign of trouble, are neurotically concerned with the physical and emotional welfare of their children, but despite their best intentions their kids can hardly be expected to grow up when they have to bear no hardships, overcome no obstacles, and face no dangers on their own.

The postponement of licensing for young drivers may also be a symptom of a broader sociological change underway. A Statistics Canada study released in September 2011 found that young adults are putting off “key life transitions” like leaving school, securing full-time employment, getting married, buying their first homes, and raising families of their own until their late twenties and early thirties. Data from the 2006 census show that almost 1 in 2 Canadians aged 20 to 29 was either moving back in with parents or had never left home at all; given the current job market, it seems likely the 2011 census data will reveal a similar trend. Some numbers out of the US are even starker: according to The New York Times, as of December 2010, 74% of college graduates aged 24 years or younger had yet to find full-time employment. Small wonder that getting a driver’s license is no longer priority one, even though not having one can be a professional barrier.

Of course, as far as many drivers are concerned, the fewer teenagers on the road, the better. In 2009, there were 2,209 fatalities and 11,451 serious injuries (i.e., injuries that required admittance to hospital) arising from automotive collisions across all age groups in Canada. Although drivers aged 16 to 19 made up just 4.7% of all drivers on the road, they accounted for a disproportionately high 10.9% of all fatalities and 12.2% of all serious injuries. Compare this to the figures for drivers aged 20 to 24: as a group they made up 8.2% of all drivers, but though nearly twice as many they accounted for just 12.8% of all fatalities and 13.5% of all serious injuries.

Does this mean that 16 years old is too young to drive? Say what you will about teenagers, but it depends on the 16-year-old and what he or she has learned in those 16 years. Just because your kid puts off getting a driver’s license doesn’t mean he’s going to turn into a reclusive forty-year-old bachelor who works in retail and spends his free time playing video games. But it probably won’t help, either.

DETROIT, MI — Honda is recalling nearly 46,000 Odyssey minivans, including almost 2,800 in Canada, because the rear doors can fall on people unexpectedly, and have on at least two occasions.

The problem affects minivans from the 2008 and 2009 model years that have power lift gates.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says on its website that gas can leak out of the struts that support the lift gates. The doors could close unexpectedly, increasing the risk of injuries.

Honda says the problem has caused two minor injuries. The company will replace both power liftgate struts for free.

Honda will send letters to van owners next month with instructions about the recall.

Owners with questions can call Honda at 1-800-999-1009.

TORONTO, ON – Scion Canada has celebrated the arrival of its newest model – the iQ. Three lucky Canadians will be among the first to drive home in their new iQ. 

To wrap up a Scion national campaign in conjuction with Cineplex Entertainment, 3 winners were drawn from a pool of over 40,000 participants who entered via cineplex.com/scioniQ. The winners are Gregg Reddin from Ottawa, ON; Carrie Guenette from Halbrite, SK; and Brigitte Inderbitzin from Smithers, BC.

“Congratulations to the winners. They’re really going to enjoy driving the new Scion iQ, which may be the world’s smallest four-seater micro-subcompact car, but they’ll quickly discover how big it is on comfort and versatility, thanks to a number of unique engineering innovations and exceptional standard features,” said Larry Hutchinson, Senior Executive Director of Scion in Canada.

The draw concluded an awareness campaign that ran for 4 weeks in Dec 2011. To make the iQ’s many attributes particularly memorable for Canadian consumers, advertisements at selected Cineplex Entertainment theatres paired movie trivia with key facts about Scion, under the fitting tagline of “Elevate your iQ.”  Attention-grabbing facts about the iQ were emphasized, including how it has the world’s smallest turning radius (3.9 metres) and that it has the world’s first rear-window curtain airbag among its 11 standard airbags.

As the world's most fuel efficient non-hybrid on the road, the Scion iQ is loaded with ingenious engineering advancements, is only three metres long and has a starting price of just $16,760.