General Motors of Canada Ltd.'s recent focus on smaller vehicles paid off in June, when the company posted stellar sales on the back of compact cars and small sport utility vehicles.

The auto maker sold 43,307 vehicles last month, up 19 per cent from June, 2004. Of that figure, car sales jumped 24 per cent to 21,246 units while truck sales, which includes SUVs, shot up nearly 15 per cent to 22,061 units.

“It's pieces of the puzzle coming together ... small cars did really well for us this month and really a lot of what we're seeing is that small car strategy coming to fruition, with vehicles like the Chevrolet Aveo and the new Cobalt and Pontiac Pursuit,” said Richard James, a spokesman for Oshawa, Ont.-based GM Canada.

Rivals DaimlerChrysler Canada Inc. and Toyota Canada Inc. posted smaller gains, while Ford Motor Co. of Canada Ltd. notched another month of declining sales.

GM Canada's figures came in the wake of strong U.S. numbers, released on Friday, at parent General Motors Corp. Its “Employee Discount for Everyone” incentives powered the world's largest auto maker to a whopping 47-per-cent sales gain — the best monthly performance in nearly two decades.

The employee discount incentive program was not available to Canadian consumers and Mr. James said there are no immediate plans to bring it to this country. In June, GM Canada gave customers a card that entitled them to 20 cents off each litre of gas purchased for a year.

“Three cheers to them,” said analyst Dennis DesRosiers, president of DesRosiers Automotive Consultants of Richmond Hill, Ont.

Mr. DesRosiers had anticipated a strong month for GM. “Their incentive programs are working — and they're playing against pretty tough competition.

“Our vehicle market is quite nicely moving to more and more entry-level vehicles and GM has a very solid entry-level lineup ...” he said. “So, they're playing into a growth end of the vehicle market: properly price it and you can do well.”

Carlos Gomes, a senior economist at Bank of Nova Scotia who closely follows the auto industry, said he was expecting sales to rebound from generally dismal results in May.

“In the last couple of months, we've added 65,000 new jobs here in Canada and that's the best two-month performance since September-October of last year,” Mr. Gomes said. “So, in terms of the underlying fundamentals for the auto industry, they're still fairly decent, which would suggest you'd get a bounce-back.”

For the first half of the year, GM Canada sales were up 4.5 per cent from the January-to-June period of 2004, with cars up 2 per cent and trucks up 7 per cent.

DaimlerChrysler Canada's sales rose 12 per cent in June, to 27,170, from a year earlier. Car sales increased 28 per cent while truck sales climbed 6.5 per cent. Its Jeep brand set a monthly record in June, with 3,500 vehicles sold — up 41 per cent. The popular Chrysler 300 series, built in Brampton, Ont., saw sales rise 55 per cent.

Year to date, DaimlerChrysler's total vehicle sales are up 0.3 per cent with its car tally up 19 per cent and truck sales down 5 per cent, the auto maker disclosed.

Toyota Canada saw a 2-per-cent rise in overall monthly sales to a record 16,774 units.