October sets new sales record
Large scale deliveries to rental car operators pushed the New Zealand new vehicle market to an all-time record month in October.
“Registrations of 16,670 vehicles for the month of October is not only the strongest month of October ever but also sets a new monthly record for any month of the year ever,” said David Crawford, chief executive officer of the Motor Industry Association.
“Previously the single strongest month was June 2017 when there were 15,985 new vehicles registered, with October 2018 coming in 7.3 per cent higher (1140 units).
“The strong result in October is off the back of car rental companies renewing their stock and is a vote of confidence by that sector in the strength of the New Zealand tourism market,” said Crawford.
The record October result follows September registrations that had dipped slightly below 2017 levels.
Year-to-date the vehicle market is up by 1.7 per cent (2301 units) compared to the first 10 months of 2017 and if current trends continue the New Zealand market is expected to top 160,000 units for the first time.
“Registrations of 11,767 passenger and SUV vehicles for the month of October were up 653 units on October 2017, an increase of 5.9 per cent and registrations of 4903 commercial vehicles were up by 487 units (11.0 per cent) on October 2017,” said Crawford.
Toyota dominated in the rental car segment and was the overall market leader in October with a massive 30 per cent market share (4998 units) to achieve its strongest month on record. Holden ranked second with 9 per cent market share (1435 units) ahead of Ford with 8 per cent market share (1288 units).
With the new Corolla and its SUV TOP-10 models proving popular with rental car firms Toyota gained a huge 33 per cent market share of Passenger and SUV registrations (3875 units), followed by Mazda with 9 per cent (1078 units) and Holden also with 9 per cnet market share (1024 units).
In the commercial sector, Toyota led the market with a 23 per cent share (1123 units) followed by Ford with 20 per cent (978 units) and Holden third with 8 per cent market share (411 units).
With a strong rental market in the month of October it comes as no surprise that the top selling model for the month was the Toyota Corolla with 1744 units, of which 1539 were rentals. The Toyota RAV4 ranked second with 996 units (814 rentals) and the Ford Ranger ranked third — and the top-selling commercial model — with 876 registrations.
Along with the Toyota models there were also significant rental car registrations of the Mazda3, Holden Commodore and the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross and ASX models.
Year-to-date the Ford Ranger continues to hold the top spot as New Zealand’s most popular new vehicle with 8306 registrations followed by the Toyota Hilux with 6760 units and the Toyota Corolla with 5830 units.
In the luxury car segment Mercedes-Benz extended its sales lead in October and with 10 months of the year complete has achieved 1874 registrations ahead of Audi on 1619 and BMW with 1490.
The huge rental car sales influenced the top three segments for the month of October. SUV Medium was the most popular segment retaining its lead with 18 per cent market share, followed by Small Cars with 16 per cent market share and SUV Compact with 13 per cent market share.
1 Toyota Corolla, 1744 2 Toyota RAV4, 996 3 Ford Ranger, 876 4 Toyota Hilux, 810 5 Mitsubishi Triton, 402 6 Holden Colorado, 398 7 Mazda CX-5, 365 8 Toyota Highlander, 332 9 Kia Sportage, 318 10 Mazda3, 306