In part due to massive marketing campaigns, many Canadians know the Ford F-Series has been Canada’s best-selling truck line for 53 years, and that the Honda Civic has been Canada’s best-selling car for 21 consecutive years.

Fewer will know that the Fiat 500L is on track to end 2019 as Canada’s worst-selling vehicle. Such a statement doesn’t lend itself to a radio jingle or high-energy television commercial.

Canada’s most popular vehicles are ascendant. In a declining pickup truck market, F-Series sales are rising, driving Ford’s share of the full-size pickup market beyond 40 per cent. Despite a marginal downturn, the Honda Civic’s share of Canada’s car market is now above 13 per cent, up from 8 per cent a decade ago.

Then there’s this group of Canada’s worst-selling vehicles, 13 nameplates that attracted 240 buyers in the first three months of 2019, or roughly the number of Civics sold by Honda Canada every day in March.

It’s not just by the standards of Canada’s leading automobiles that these vehicles are embarrassingly uncommon. The Audi Q8, a decidedly premium SUV that is only in its launch phase, is twice as popular as these 13 vehicles combined. Canada’s top-selling premium vehicle, the Mercedes-Benz GLC, has a base price near $50,000, yet it generates 10 times the volume of these worst sellers. All of these worst sellers combined don’t produce as much volume as the Porsche 911, or Kia Stinger, or the $110,300 Lexus LX570.

To determine the worst-selling vehicles in Canada in the first quarter of 2019, we narrowed the list of qualified vehicles to include nameplates with base prices under $100,000, excluded vehicles that weren’t on sale at the beginning of 2019, excluded two-seaters, and removed vehicles that had received their official cancellation papers. Vehicles that haven’t found a single buyer are deemed dead in the water, even if only temporarily, and are also given a reprieve.

On the whole, these rules eliminate most vehicles that are automatically destined to be low-volume products in Canada. With figures from the Global Automakers of Canada, these are Canada’s 10 worst-selling vehicles in 2019’s first three months.

T10. Fiat 500, Volvo S90, Jaguar XF

What do a stoic Swede, a forgotten Brit, and a formerly beloved Italian have in common? Their level of Canadian unpopularity is identical, and sufficient to place them on this list of Canada’s worst-selling vehicles in 2019’s first quarter. The Fiat 500 is down 56 per cent, year-over-year, but that tells only a part of the story – Canadians initially snapped up 700+ Cinquecentos per month. The Volvo S90 is lost in a sea of tailgated Volvos – the company’s SUVs and wagons generate 85 per cent of its Canadian sales. The XF is par for the course at Jaguar these days: a sedan that never fared well now struggling to maintain any semblance of desirability in a market gone mad for luxury SUVs.

T8. Maserati Ghibli: 29, down 24 per cent

The Ghibli was initially Maserati’s route into the mainstream of Canada’s luxury market. While the Quattroporte and GranTurismo stuck to the very high-end clientele, the Ghibli would begin to reach downmarket. Relatively speaking, of course. That job is now the job of an SUV, the Levante. Just as the Ghibli found it a challenge, so too does the Levante. Sales of every Maserati are nosediving in 2019, from the Quattroporte’s 57-percent drop to the 91-percent GranTurismo decline, the Ghibli’s 24-percent decrease, and the Levante’s 25-percent downturn.

T8. Jaguar XJ: 29, down 69 per cent

Jaguar is now not so different from its Land Rover partner brand. Land Rover produces all of its sales from SUVs. Jaguar, a brand that only launched its first utility vehicle three years ago, is already at 82 per cent. The XJ is Jaguar’s longest-running nameplate and Jaguar’s flagship, but it’s also the brand’s least popular model. It’s part of a Jaguar car lineup that’s lost nearly two-thirds of its volume, year-over-year, in 2019.

7. BMW 6 Series: 27, down 69 per cent

To be fair, two of the three 6 Series body styles hit the market with MSRPs well beyond our $100,000 maximum. But the 6 Series Gran Turismo is a sub-$80K car, and a scarcely seen one at that. BMW brought back the 6 moniker in 2012. Despite its challenging design statement, it proved to be a relatively successful venture for such a high-end coupe/cabriolet. BMW Canada averaged nearly 500 annual sales for the first half-decade.

6. Infiniti Q70: 18, up 13 per cent

In 2019, it’s not easy to sell an upmarket sedan even if it’s a known entity; a once-beloved premium statement maker such as the Mercedes-Benz E-Class or BMW 5 Series. Imagine then what it’s like to try to sell an Infiniti Q70, a car that’s largely been ignored – and hence unknown – since it operated as the Infiniti M. Fewer than 2,400 have been in Canada sold over the last decade.

5. Lincoln MKT: 16, down 45 per cent

The Canadian-built, Ford Flex-related, awkwardly-beaked Lincoln MKT lingers. Though now geared toward the fleet and livery markets, the Lincoln MKT’s dearth of popularity is nothing new. MKT sales have fallen in seven of the last eight years, plunging 83 per cent between 2010 and 2018. There are high hopes for the vehicle that will take its place: the new Aviator. Conventionally handsome rather than unnecessarily distinctive, the Aviator is likely to succeed where the MKT flopped.

4. Fiat 500X: 13, down 19 per cent

Where the Fiat 500L failed, could the Fiat 500X succeed? It appears not. Despite a market that’s quickly finding space for subcompact crossovers such as the Mazda CX-3, Nissan Qashqai, and Hyundai Kona, the Fiat 500X hasn’t captured the hearts of Canadian shoppers. Though weak since its 2015 launch, 500X sales plunged 91 per cent last year.

3. Kia Cadenza: 10, down 29 per cent

As an import upstart decades late to the party, the Kia Cadenza was destined to struggle. But the Cadenza’s timing – it arrived in 2013 – came as buyers were fleeing sedans; especially large sedans. The competitors from which the Cadenza was intended to steal sales were rapidly losing influence. In its best year, which was its first, Kia Canada didn’t even manage to find 200 buyers. It’s too bad – the Cadenza’s premium cabin is a wonderful place to spend a long journey.

2. Genesis G90: 3, down 77 per cent

Hyundai’s premium Genesis offshoot is very slowly beginning to pick up a small measure of steam, but that has nothing to do with its flagship G90. Known as the Hyundai Equus in a previous life, the G90 now sits atop the G80 and newer, entry-level G70 in the Genesis lineup. The G70 earns four out of five Genesis sales in Canada. With only 281 sales in 2019’s first quarter, the brand sells one car for every six copies of the Mercedes-Benz C-Class.

1. Fiat 500L: 2, down 60 per cent

Chronically unpopular long before it became almost wholly undesirable, the Fiat 500L trudges along in obscurity. Reflective of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ seeming unwillingness to give the Fiat brand a chance in North America, the 500L’s reputation for poor reliability, together with poor styling and unappealing on-road behaviour, conspire to keep buyers far, far away. At its peak in 2014, FCA Canada was averaging slightly more than 200 500L sales per month.