HALF WAY POINT

WE'VE hit the halfway point of the year and the overall 4x4 sales race is tantalisingly close between – no surprises here – Ford’s Ranger and Toyota’s Hilux, with the Japanese brand leading the race by a meagre 21 units.

It has also been a solid year for the Mitsubishi Triton 4x4 which has been purchased 12,187 times. In fact, the Hilux, Ranger and Triton were the bestselling overall new cars in June when you combine 4x4 and 4x2 variants. The Triton even pipped the always popular Toyota Corolla, which secured 3780 sales.

In June, the Ranger 4x4 outsold the Hilux 4x4 by 204 units, while the Triton had a 36 per cent increase in sales month-to-month. Mercedes-benz’s new X-class found its way to 218 new homes.

The LCV market remains steady, with 28,346 sales recorded for June 2018 (28,253 sales were recorded in June 2017). So far in 2018, 122,895 LCV sales have been recorded (at the same time last year, that number was 118,995).