Market down

For the first time in four years Australians didn’t buy a record number of new vehicles in 2018. In fact, as credit got tighter in the second half of the year, sales took on an increasingly average look with December off 14.9 per cent compared to 12 months prior. Toyota dominated the sales chart overall ahead of Mazda and Hyundai. Toyota also had the biggest selling vehicles, the HiLux ute, which led the Ford Ranger. The Toyota Corolla completed the rostrum. Holden’s first year as an importer was disastrous, dropping a whopping 32 per cent compared to 2017. Clearly, the end of local Commodore accounted for much of the sales collapse. By way of comparison, Holden sold over 95,000 Commodores in the 1998 calendar year, while in 2018 it moved just 9100 examples – less than 10 percent of the model’s tally from 20 years ago.