Should utes be reclassified?
Which is New Zealand’s most popular passenger vehicle for the year so far?
Is it the Toyota Corolla, which to the end of May had achieved 1829 sales? Or is it the Toyota RAV4, which topped the sales for the month of May with 391 registrations? Or is it the Kia Sportage, which leads the 2017 registrations race if sales to rental car companies are removed from the equation?
Or maybe we should consider utes to be passenger instead of commercial vehicles and recognise the fact that they are easily New Zealand’s most popular vehicles – in May the Ford Ranger, Toyota Hilux and Mitsubishi Triton cleaned out all the passenger vehicles and were the top three best-selling vehicles fullstop.
That’s the scenario in what continues to be the most buoyant sales year in the history of New Zealand’s new vehicle industry.
There were 13,132 new vehicle registrations in May, which Motor Industry Association president Glynn Tulloch says confirms that the sales growth seen so far this year is sustainable and shows every sign of continuing.
Year-to-date the new vehicle sector is 14 per cent ahead of this time last year, with 63,244 vehicles registered compared to 55,435 in 2016.
Passenger vehicle registrations in May were up 11.8 per cent (885 units) on May last year. But this percentage climb was nothing compared to commercial vehicle registrations which were up 29 per cent (1067 units) for the month.
Not only was this the strongest May on record for registrations of new commercial vehicles, but the strongest month ever since the MIA began collecting vehicle sales statistics in 1975.
Looking at passenger vehicles, the most popular model in May was the Toyota RAV4 with its 391 registrations. But of that total, 218 were registered as rentals.
The Toyota Corolla recorded 281 registrations, which took its total for the year to 1827. But of that total, 419 of the sales have been to rental companies.
If the rental business is removed from the equation, this leaves the Kia Sportage and the Mazda CX-5 as the most popular passenger vehicles – last month the Mazda achieved 330 sales and the Kia 302 sales (with neither figuring in the lists of the top 15 rental vehicles for the month or the year), and year-to-date the Sportage has achieved 1517 registrations and the CX-5 1253 registrations.
But no matter how passenger vehicle sales are viewed, they nowhere near match the sales of the most popular commercial vehicles.
In May there were 889 Ford Ranger, 819 Toyota Hilux and 501 Mitsubishi Triton ute registrations, all of which were way more than registrations of any of the leading passenger vehicles – and only a few of these registrations (52 Hiluxes and 32 Rangers) were as rentals.
Not only that but two other utes, the Holden Colorado and the Isuzu D-Max, made the list of the top 10 best-selling vehicles for the month. It dramatically underlined the continuing massive popularity of utes in this country.
Overall, in May four of the top five vehicle segments where dominated by SUVs and utes.
The medium-sized SUV segment was the most dominant with an 18 per cent share, followed by 4x4 utes with 16 per cent, large SUVs with 12 per cent, and 4x2 utes with 10 per cent.