Lone Ranger easily tops sales again
SALES
The Ford Ranger has been New Zealand’s bestselling new vehicle for the last five years. December 2019 new vehicle registration figures released this week confirmed the Ranger has comfortably maintained its number one status with Kiwi new vehicle buyers while the Toyota Corolla ranked number two and was New Zealand’s best-selling new car for 2019.
As forecast since early in the year, total new vehicle registrations in 2019 were down on 2018 and recorded a fall for the first time since 2009. However December 2019 registrations picked up fractionally on the same month in 2018 with a 0.1 per cent (10 units) increase to 11,160 units.
“As expected, for 2019 the market was down 4.3 per cent (7007 units) on 2018,” said Motor Industry Association chief executive David Crawford.
“It is the first time since 2009, the height of the global financial crisis, that we have seen a year-on-year drop in new vehicle registrations and comes after five consecutive record years (2014 to 2018).”
The total of 154,763 new vehicle registrations for 2019 still ranks as the third highest since records began being kept in 1970.
Patterns of purchasing shifted during the year. The market began the year as it finished in 2018 with the market dominated by sales of utes, however, as the last quarter unfolded the sales of utes have been in decline compared to the start of the year and for 2018.
That pattern continued in December with 8159 passenger and SUV registrations for December 2019 being up 6.2 per cent (479 units) on 2018 volumes while commercial vehicle registrations were down for a third consecutive month with a total of 3001, down 13.5 per cent (469 units) compared to December 2018.
Toyota was the December market leader gaining a 31 per cent market share (3407 units), followed by Mitsubishi with 9 per cent (1014 units) and Holden in third spot with 7 per cent market share (799 units).
Across the full year Toyota was the market leader for 2019 with 20 per cent share, followed by Ford with 10 per cent and Mitsubishi in third with 8 per cent share, just ahead of Holden also with 8 per cent share for the year.
For the month of December, Toyota was the market leader for passenger and SUV registrations with 33 per cent market share (2730 units) followed by Mitsubishi with 8 per cent (676 units) and then Holden with 6 per cent market share (526 units).
The top selling passenger and SUV models for the month were the Toyota Corolla (907 units) followed by the Toyota RAV4 (747 units) and the Toyota Camry (327 units). Toyota’s December total included just over 1600 deliveries to rental car operators.
For the full year, the top passenger and SUV models were the Toyota Corolla (6804 units) followed by the Toyota RAV4 (5611 units) and the Mazda CX-5 (3312 units). The Kia Sportage and Suzuki Swift also ranked among the topselling passenger models.
The Ford Ranger retained the top spot as the bestselling commercial model for December with 473 units followed by the Toyota Hilux with 461 units and the Mitsubishi Triton in third place with 338 units.
For the year, the Ranger was the clear market leader with 9485 units followed by the Hilux with 7126 units with the Triton in third with 5319 units.
Pure electric vehicle continued their modest rate of monthly registrations at 175 units for December headed by the Tesla marque with 115 units. Tesla sold 802 new vehicles in 2019, up from 254 the previous year.
There were 35 PHEV’s and 692 hybrid vehicles sold for the month and the Toyota RAV4 Hybrid, introduced into the market in March, has become established as New Zealand’s most popular hybrid vehicle ahead of the Toyota Corolla Hybrid.
The top three vehicle segments for the month of December were once again SUV medium vehicles with 19 per cent share followed by SUV Compact with 18 per cent market share and the Pick Up/ Chassis 4x4 segment with 12 per cent.
Across the full year the SUV medium segment accounted for 19 per cent of all new vehicle sales followed by the Pick Up/Chassis Cab 4x4 segment on 15 per cent with the SUV Compact segment quickly gaining ground also with 15 per cent share.
The Small Car segment accounted for 10 per cent of 2019 new vehicle sales while the once important Medium and Large Car categories now represent only 3 per cent and 2 per cent of sales respectively as combined SUV sales have grown to almost two-thirds of the passenger vehicle segment.