NZ’s most popular car is ... a Suzuki
Toyota rental sales plummet while Suzuki Swift soars into passenger car lead. Rob Maetzig reports.
Amassive drop in registration of new cars as rental vehicles has had a big impact on passenger car popularity in February.
In January, it was the Toyota Corolla that was easily the most popular passenger car, achieving a total of 958 sales - with 696 of them as rentals.
But in February the rental sales all but disappeared - just six Corollas were registered as rentals - which reduced the total number of Corolla registrations for the month to 258.
And that let the Suzuki Swift hatch to move into top spot for the month with 307 registrations, followed by the Mazda CX-5 which achieved 276 sales. Significantly, none of the Swift or CX-5 registrations were as rental vehicles.
The Corolla wasn’t the only vehicle to experience a major drop in rental registrations.
In January 292 Toyota Highlanders were sold as rentals last month the figure was just 13. In January 209 Toyota RAV4s were sold as rentals - last month the figure was 10.
Rental sales of the Ford Focus in January numbered 196 - last month this dropped to just three. And whereas 165 Mazda3s were registered as rentals in January, last month there were none.
As a result, February new vehicle registrations of 11,531 vehicles were down 2 per cent or
254 vehicles on February last year. Registrations of 7415 passenger and SUV vehicles were down 8 per cent, but this was partly offset by the registration of 4116 commercial vehicles which were up 10 per cent on February 2017.
Figures supplied by the Motor Industry Association show that the top five best-selling models in February were all light commercials.
Ford Ranger held first place with 735 sales, just ahead of the Toyota Hilux which achieved 703 registrations - 43 of them as rentals, which made the ute the most popular rental vehicle for the month. Other utes in the top five were Nissan Navara (398 registrations), Mitsubishi Triton
(368) and Holden Colorado (362). Toyota remains the overall market leader with a 17 per cent share, followed by Ford with 10 per cent and Holden with 8 per cent.
Toyota is also the market leader for passenger and SUV registrations with a 14 per cent share, and it leads the commercial sector with a 23 per cent share.
MIA chief executive David Crawford said while the market for new vehicles remains strong, some vehicle segments were constrained by low stock levels, and this situation will continue into the forseeable future.