Coronavirus convulsions
THE CORONAVIRUS WREAKED HAVOC WITH New Zealand’s new truck market in April – the Level 4 state of emergency, unsurprisingly, reducing monthly registrations to historic lows. The widespread expectation that this unprecedented closedown of the country to stop the global COVID-19 pandemic taking a devastating hold here, came to pass – with a vengeance.
Just 89 new trucks in the overall market (all trucks with a GVM of
4.5 tonnes or more) were registered….and trailermakers put a mere eight units on the road.
The scale of the savaging that the heavy commercial vehicle market took in April is revealed by a comparison of the figures with those for the same month last year – the truck registrations down 311 units and 77.8%....while the eight trailer regos represented a 93.6% drop on last
April’s 126.
Year-to-date truck registrations at the end of April stood at 1134 – a third down on the 1700 for the first four months of 2020.
The trailer market’s YTD total stood at 318 – 179 (and 36%) down on the same point last year.
In the overall truck market, Isuzu (270/21) continued to clearly lead the 2020 figures with 270 registrations – moving further ahead of second-placed FUSO (181/9) and third-placed Hino (131/7).
However, Volvo registered a standout 27 trucks to become April’s top performer – taking its 2020 registrations total to 109 and going clear of fifth-placed Scania (82/6), Iveco (71/4), Mercedes-Benz (54/7), Kenworth (50/1), UD (43/2) and DAF (31/2).
In the 3.5-4.5t GVM crossover segment, Fiat (63/0) held its lead, although it had no registrations for the month. Mercedes-Benz (30/3)