Bumper month for vehicle sales
Strong demand for SUVs, utes and a booming rental market pushed vehicle sales to record levels last month. There were 537 new vehicles registered every day during October, with total registrations surpassing 16,000 units for the first time.
“Registration of 16,670 vehicles for the month of October is not only the strongest October ever but also sets a new record for any month of the year ever,” said the chief executive of the Motor Industry Association, David Crawford.
The previous single strongest month was June last year, when 15,985 vehicles were registered, but last month there were 1140 or 7.3 per cent more vehicles registered.
Toyota retained the overall market-leader position with
30 per cent market share (4998 units, also its strongest month), built largely on rental sales, followed by Holden with 9 per cent (1435 units) and Ford with 8 per cent market share (1288 units).
Toyota retained the market lead for passenger and SUV registrations with a 33 per cent share of the October passenger and SUV market (3875 units), followed by Mazda with 9 per cent (1078 units) and Holden also with 9 per cent market share (1024 units).
In the commercial sector, Toyota retained the market lead with
23 per cent market share (1123 units) followed by Ford with 20 per cent (978 units) and Holden third with
8 per cent market share (411 units).
The top-selling model during October was the Toyota Corolla with 1744 units, of which 1539 were rentals, followed by the Toyota RAV4 with 996 units (814 rentals) and the Ford Ranger ute, third with 876 units. However, year to date the Ford Ranger still holds the top-model spot with 8306 units followed by the Toyota Hilux with 6760 units and the Toyota Corolla with 5830 units.
The Toyota New Zealand general manager of new vehicle sales and product planning, Neeraj Lala, said fleet and rental sales remained strong with both up on the previous year.
This is despite the company introducing a “no haggle” pricing strategy this year.
“Our dealers were only down by 2 per cent despite the significant changes we made to our retail model earlier in the year,” he said.
Year to date, the market is also up on the record-setting levels seen in 2017, holding steady up by 1.7 per cent (2301 units) compared to the first 10 months of last year.
Registrations of 11,767 passenger and SUV vehicles during October were up 653 units on October 2017, an increase of 5.9 per cent and registrations of 4903 commercial vehicles were up by 487 units (11 per cent) on October 2017.
The top three segments for October were all medium to small vehicles, with the SUV medium segment retaining its lead with 18 per cent market share, followed by small vehicles with 16 per cent and SUV compact with 13 per cent.
David Crawford said the strong result in October was off the back of car rental companies renewing their stock and was a vote of confidence by that sector in the strength of the New Zealand tourism market.