Toyota Hilux back at the top
retains a 823- unit lead in the yearto- date ute sales figures.
New Zealand’s new vehicle sector continued to shatter registration records in August, defying any pre- election slowdown.
The motor industry continues to perform well ahead of last year’s record numbers, with 103,923 vehicles registered to the end of August.
This is the quickest New Zealand’s market has ever reached 100,000 registrations and is well ahead of where the market was a decade ago.
In 2007, there were a total of 102,468 registered in the entire calendar year.
“Registrations were 11.3 per cent above this time in 2016 and registration of 13,063 vehicles for August were up 3.0 per cent on August 2016,” said Motor Industry Association’s chief executive, David Crawford.
The mix of vehicles registered last month showed changing buyer preferences, he said. “While passenger car
and SUV registrations of 8607 units were down 3.2 per cent ( 289 units) on August 2016, registrations of 4456 commercial vehicles for the month of August were up by 17.9 per cent ( 675 units) on August 2016.”
Despite the stellar result for utes, mid- size SUVs were still New Zealand’s favourite segment in August with 16 per cent ( 2122 units) market share, followed by 4x4 utes ( 14 per cent, 1825 units) and small passenger cars ( 11 per cent, 1501 units).
August proved to be a great month for long- time market leader Toyota. Not only did the Hilux outsell Ford’s Ranger, the Toyota Corolla was the third bestselling vehicle on the market.
The Corolla on 540 units was followed by the Kia Sportage ( 370 units) and Holden Colorado ( 361 units) making up the country’s top five selling vehicles during August.
With the Hilux ute and Hiace van performing strongly, Toyota was again the market leader in the commercial sector with 25 per cent ( 1 114 units) market share, ahead of Ford ( 883 units) and Holden ( 385 units).
Completing the sweep, Toyota remained the outright market leader with 2511 units in August and 19 per cent market share of total sale. Following was Ford with 19 per cent ( 1305 units), then Holden ( 1071 units) and Mazda ( 1055 units), both with 8 per cent.