Canada has become a laboratory for the automobile industry's experiment with selling cars to consumers over the Internet.

The Canadian subsidiaries of Ford Motor and Toyota Motor have established test Web sites to let consumers in three regions of the country log onto the Internet to buy vehicles -- tests that could foreshadow the parent companies' global strategies. Though all automakers maintain Web pages for product and other information, car buyers in Canada can use the Toyota site to compare competitive brands, pick the model and options they want, get a price for their trade-in vehicle, arrange financing and place an order through a participating dealer. Although car manufacturers are venturing into Internet sales slowly, the idea is nothing new. E-commerce car-dealer specialists like CarsDirect.com and carOrder.com have expanded quickly in the United States, and cars4u.com is about to begin operations in Canada. Online sales of new and used cars in the United States amounted to $19 billion last year, about 3 percent of the total market, according to Gomez Advisors, a research firm in Lincoln, Mass. But it says that by 2002, Internet auto purchases will exceed $140 billion annually, almost a 20 percent share.