Utes continue to dominate NZ new car market

Friday, 3 February 2023

The Hilux led Toyota New Zealand in what proved to be a record-breaking month for the marque.

In spite of the adoption of the Clean Car Standard, utes have continued to lead the New Zealand new vehicle registration charts.

The Motor Industry Association has confirmed that the Toyota Hilux narrowly led the Ford Ranger in January, 800 registrations to 796.

Toyota is very serious about claiming the top ute spot back off Ford with the heavily revised Hilux.

The Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross (421 registrations), Toyota RAV4 (386), and Kia Stonic (341) led the passenger vehicle market, ending the month third, fourth and fifth overall.

The top 10 was completed by the Kia Niro (338), Suzuki Swift (326), MG ZS (311), Mitsubishi Triton (311), and Mitsubishi Outlander (301). All up, 12,481 new vehicles were registered in January; down 7.4% on the same month last year.

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Almost half of Toyota’s January sales were hybrid vehicles.

Other notable results included the BYD Atto 3’s 11th-place finish, its 235 registrations making it the best-selling EV for the month – heading the MG ZS EV and Kia EV6. Tesla was absent from the charts, with no major shipment arriving in January.

Despite the Hilux and Ranger topping the market, commercial vehicle sales were actually down 29.6% year-on-year. The passenger market, meanwhile, was up 3.9%. MIA chief executive David Crawford says that January’s data indicates that some businesses are likely struggling.

“It is pleasing to see confidence from private buyers is holding up, however the business sector appears to be battening down the hatches on unnecessary or unaffordable expenditure,” he said.

The Hilux’s strong result is bittersweet for Toyota New Zealand, with the brand having recently underscored its hopes to sell fewer of the famous nameplate in 2023.

In a statement issued earlier this week, it instead noted that 49% of its sales in January were electrified models, with the marque’s 2597 registrations representing a local record.

“We would like to thank our customers for their ongoing support, as we start to regain stock allocation and deliver vehicles to customers who have been waiting for a while,” said Toyota New Zealand CEO Neeraj Lala.

“We are focusing on getting further stock allocation for the rest of the quarter to continue to meet our customer demand.”

“I am incredibly proud to see that our customer demand continues to swing towards electrified product with almost 50% of our sales in January hybrid electric vehicles,” Lala added.

“However, our goal has always been depth and breadth of our range to ensure we are meeting the needs of all our kiwi customers, and this includes commercial vehicles like Hilux which meets the needs of a large sector of our customer base.

“We can still achieve number one for Hilux while maintaining our reduction in CO2 through our balanced portfolio and we will continue to do so throughout the year.”