Best selling cars in Australia

New year, same story.

The first month of new car sales figures of 2018 released by the federal chambers of automotive industries tells a very familiar story.

Toyota's HiLux was again the top selling vehicle with 3860 units moved, while the Ford Ranger was again second best with 3260 sales.

While no other dual-cab ute managed to make the top 10, the light commercial segment still enjoyed a strong start to the year with whole market up by just more than 20 per cent compared to the same month last year. This was due to several large improvements by the Nissan Navara, Mitsubishi Triton as well as the two sales leaders.

The Mazda3 (3201) took the early bragging rights in the passenger car stakes leading the Toyota Corolla (2776) and Hyundai i30 (1850).

Mazda's SUVs had a strong month with the mid-size Mazda CX-5 (2152) and CX-3 (1582) city SUV both appearing in the top 10 and topping the respective segments.

SUVs as whole had a strong month in January with a 10.9 per cent increase on last January, this continues the trend seen throughout the last few years as buyers shed traditional passenger cars in favour of high-riding wagons.

On the back of this strong growth were solid sales of the Toyota RAV4 (1780) and Nissan X-Trail (1668). Hyundai's Tucson (1420) and Honda CR-V (1474) were also both knocking on the door of the top 10 sellers.

The Volkswagen Golf (1629) improved its performance compared to January last year with almost 25 per cent more sales.

Two notable absentees from the first top 10 sellers of the year were two former locally-made stalwarts: the Holden Commodore and the Toyota Camry with each falling well short of 1000 sales with 871 and 754 registrations respectively.

Both large and medium car segments are down considerably which continues the decline of nthe traditional family car in Australia.

Luxury carmaker has mixed success in January with Mercedes-Benz and Lexus both up about 9 and 7 per cent respectively, but Audi was down by more than 20 per cent from last year, while BMW was flat.

Top selling vehicles January 2018 

Toyota HiLux – 3860 

Ford Ranger – 3260 

Mazda3 – 3201 

Toyota Corolla – 2776 

Mazda CX-5 – 2152 

Hyundai i30 – 1850 

Toyota RAV4 – 1780 

Nissan X-Trail – 1668 

Volkswagen Golf – 1629 

Mazda CX-3 – 1582 

Top selling marques in 2018 

Toyota – 15,306 

Mazda – 10,113 

Hyundai – 7124 

Holden – 5719 

Ford – 5645 

Mitsubishi – 5263 

Nissan – 4707 

Honda – 4581 

Kia – 4531 

Subaru – 4253 

Source: Federal chambers of automotive industries