VFACTS January 2018 – Utes Take An Early Lead Once Again

HiLux and Ranger start the year strongly.

Dom Tripolone

04:5305 February 2018

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VFACTS January 2018 - Utes Take An Early Lead Once Again

The new car sales results are in for the first month of 2018, and you could be forgiven for thinking you've seen it all before.

January 2018's figures have been released by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, revealing a very familiar set of results.

Once again the Toyota HiLux topped the charts, selling 3860 units (4x2 and 4x4 combined), while the Ford Ranger pulled second place 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.

Australia's third most popular vehicle was the The Mazda3 (3201) which takes early bragging rights in the passenger car stakes ahead of 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.

In the Commodore's case the figures are based on clearing remaining stocks of the locally assembled model ahead of the all new version due next month, while the Camry was also complicated by the changeover to a fully imported model.

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

Luxury carmakers had 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 held steady.

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