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SUVS 793 units from supremacy
HIGHLIGHTS We kicked off the year with our second strongest January sales tally on record. It’s the month in which private buyers traditionally chase previous-year-plate run-out deals, and that helped push Mazda 3 to the top of the January sales chart, ahead of Toyota’s Corolla, for the fifth year running. SUV sales crept within 793 units of overtaking those of traditional passenger cars as the soft-roader trend continues to ride high.
LOWLIGHTS Fleet departments traditionally take a holiday in January, so car makers that rely on them to bolster numbers take a temporary dive. Toyota sales, for example, dropped 37 percent and Camry nose-dived way below the top 20 sellers. Mid-size passenger car sales fell more than 62 percent; Jeep plumbed sales depths it had not seen in almost a decade, while ute- and Suv-focused Isuzu fell from December’s 2604 sales to just 1095 as it cleared stock ahead of facelifted models arriving in February.