Record-setting 2021 a huge year for new car sales

Thursday, 6 January 2022

These are the ten best-selling vehicles in New Zealand for 2021, and for the first time an EV is in there.

New car registrations soared to a new high in December, cementing 2021 as the biggest on record for the new car industry in New Zealand.

It also saw both the Ford Ranger and Tesla Model 3 have record years in New Zealand, with the Ranger remaining the country’s best-selling vehicle, clocking up a massive 12,580 sales for the year, while the Model 3 became the first EV to break into the top ten (and top five for passenger sales) with an impressive 3271 sales for 2021, eventually beating out the Mazda CX-5 to take 9th place in the overall annual sales, bumping the Suzuki Swift out of the top ten.

Happy faces all around at Tesla – the Model 3 became the first EV to break into the top ten best-selling new vehicles in New Zealand in 2021.

With 12,097 sales of new vehicles the last month of 2021 was the strongest December on record, with registrations were up 44.3 per cent (3714 units) on the same month in 2020.

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The Ford Ranger maintained its utter domination over new vehicle sales in New Zealand, both in December and in 2021 overall.

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Toyota’s RAV4 was the best-selling hybrid in 2021, while the company remained the overall market leader for the year.

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This meant that 2021 finished with a record-breaking 165,287 new car registrations, a massive increase of 38.3 per cent (45,837 units) over 2020. According to the Motor Industry Association (MIA), the previous strongest year was 2018 with 161,519 registrations.

The Ranger maintained its stranglehold over the sales charts again in December, with 778 units registered, followed by the Mitsubishi Triton (757 units), the Toyota Hilux (644 units) and then the Tesla Model 3 in fourth spot (619 units).

“The strongest December on record solidified 2021 as the strongest year for passenger and SUV’s, second strongest for commercials and strongest year ever overall,” said MIA Chief Executive David Crawford, adding “For 2022 the order book remains strong with long wait lists for popular models.”

Crawford also noted that the fleet mix was changing too, with more hybrids and EVs in the mix.

Vehicles with some form of electrification grew strongly in 2021 due to both wider availability and incentive from the Clean Car Discount scheme, with 6899 BEVs, 2461 PHEVs and 13,794 hybrid vehicles registered for the year compared to 1554 BEVs, 756 PHEVs and 8667 Hybrids in 2020.

The top-selling EVs for December were the Tesla Model 3 (619 units) followed by the Hyundai Kona (138 units) and the Hyundai Ioniq 5 (70 units), while the overall top-sellers for the year were the Model 3 with 3,271 registrations, followed by the MG ZS (872 units) and Hyundai Kona (825 units).

Toyota once again dominated hybrid sales in 2021, with the three top-sellers all being from the Japanese brand – the RAV4 with 4596 registrations was followed by the Corolla (1,987 units) and Highlander (942 units).

Once again the small to medium SUV segments made up 56 per cent of sales for the year, while the top-selling vehicles for 2021 were the Ford Ranger (12,580 units) followed by the Toyota Hilux (8430 units) and the Mitsubishi Outlander (6506 units).

For the year, the top three market leaders were Toyota with an18 per cent market share (29,258 units) followed by Mitsubishi with 12 per cent (20,140 units) and Ford with a 10 per cent market share, selling 17,286 units, of which just 4706 weren’t Rangers.