VFACTS December: Holden Astra stuns, hits #2 – UPDATE

As you can read here, Australia's automotive peak body claimed to have recorded the highest ever annual sales tally in 2017, eclipsing the record from the year before.

Here we look at the results specific to December, always an interesting month where some brands register vehicles later to be sold as demonstrators - bids to meet annual targets.

In fact, there's usually one bolter in December.

This time it was the Holden Astra, which had its best month in many, many years and stormed to second on the charts, with 3533 'sales'. Only the Toyota HiLux beat it. Holden as a brand had a monster month, with the Colorado in fourth spot on 3222 units (almost level with the Ford Ranger).

All told, SUVs grabbed 39.3 per cent market share for the month, ahead of passenger cars on 35.7 and light commercials on 21.6 - meaning more than one-in-five vehicles sold new last month was a ute or van.

The Toyota HiLux occupied its normal position at the top of the charts, one of four utes inside the top six overall. Two small cars sat amongst them, the Astra (we suspect there’ll be some demos to be found, now) and the Mazda 3.

Rounding out the top 20 were the Toyota Corolla (it still finished the year as the #1 passenger car), Holden Commodore, cut-price Mitsubishi ASX, Mazda CX-5, Isuzu D-Max (another ute), Toyota RAV4, Volkswagen Golf, Nissan X-Trail, Honda Civic, Toyota Prado, Nissan Navara, and a pair of Hyundais in the i30 and Tucson (usually way higher but the company is keeping its powder dry for 2018, clearly).

A pair of regular top 10 cars, the Mazda CX-3 and Toyota Camry (now to be imported) were 21 and 22.

Micro cars:

Light cars:

Small cars:

Medium Cars:

Large Cars:

People Movers:

Sports Cars:

Small SUV under $40k:

Small SUV over $40k:

Medium SUV under $60k:

Medium SUV over $60k:

Large SUV under $70k:

Large SUV over $70k:

Upper Large SUV:

Vans:

Utes:

MORE: New car sales news coverage

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