Wheels (Australia)

Marketplac­e

SUVS 793 units from supremacy

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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.

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