New vehicle sales bounce back strongly

Wednesday, 3 February 2021

These are the ten best-selling new vehicles in New Zealand so far in 2021.

New vehicle sales have made a strong start to the year, with January seeing close to 14,000 new registrations, up 6.2 per cent on last year, making it the third strongest January on record.

The registration of 13,893 new vehicles was up by 815 on January 2020, with 9713 passenger vehicles and SUVs making up the bulk of the increase (up 614 units or 6.7 per cent), while light commercial registrations of 4180 were also up, but not by as much (201 units for a 5.1 per cent increase).

As usual utes dominated the top of the sales charts, with the Ford Ranger clocking up 948 sales for the first month of the year, while the refreshed Toyota Hilux registered 750 units, followed by the Toyota RAV4 in third (471 units).

The venerable Ford Ranger retains a strong sales lead going into 2021.

The top ten was rounded out by the Mitsubishi Triton (414), Mitsubishi Outlander (389), Kia Seltos (387), Mitsubishi ASX (375), Kia Sportage (374), Mazda CX-5 (302) and Nissan Navara (281).

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The overall market leader for the start of 2021 was Toyota with a 17 per cent chunk of the market (2368 units), while Mitsubishi just pipped Ford and Kia for second place with 1437 units sold compared to the Ford’s 1390 units and Kia’s 1352 units (all on 10 per cent market share).

In terms of vehicle segments, compact SUVs were the bestsellers with a 26 per cent market share, followed by medium SUVs with 18 per cent and 4X4 utes with 16 per cent.

Sales of new electric and electrified vehicles were all up on last January with EVs accounting for 224 sales, PHEVs 93 sales and hybrids ticking up 1073 sales.

The virtual disappearance of rental sales and Toyota’s renewed focus on the private sector (that fortuitously happened before the coronavirus pandemic slammed the door on rental sales) has seen both Mitsubishi and Kia close in on Toyota’s passenger car/SUV sales lead, with Kia clocking up 1352 units for second place (and the third bestseller in the segment with the small Seltos SUV accounting for 387 units) and Mitsubishi taking third with 1002 units (and the second bestseller with the medium Outlander SUV ticking up 389 units).

But Toyota still takes out the top passenger spot with 1442 units and the RAV4 dominating with 471 units.

It was a similar story in the commercial segment with Ford taking the top spot again (1021 units/24 per cent share) followed by Toyota (946 units/23 per cent) Mitsubishi (435 units/10 per cent), with the Ranger (948 units), Hilux (750 units) and Triton (414 units) respectively filling the top three spots.