Weight class – the lightest, and heaviest, cars for sale in Australia

There are only three brands (over five models) that offer a car in Australia weighing under 1000kg, which given the expansion of technology, is still pretty impressive.

Cars are getting heavier, there's no doubt about it. A 1992 Volkswagen Golf GTi (below), tipped the scales at 1002kg, whereas the new one weighs 1477kg, a rise of 475kg.

Sure, it has been 30 years and the new model features safety, convenience and performance technology the MK2 Golf couldn't have dreamed of in the early '90s, but even this 'moderate' rise is an increase of 47 per cent.

Today the average weight of all 336 models on sale is 1783kg. Yes, some have batteries, some are big, but so much of that is added strengthening and safety that has been built into and around our cars over the past few decades.

We've compiled the 20 lightest, and heaviest cars on sale today. For the list, we've chosen the lightest variant on offer.

The accolade of the lightest car you can buy today is the 820kg Suzuki Ignis GL manual (below). In fact, Suzuki is the lightest brand with the average weight of the Ignis, Swift, Jimny, Vitara and S-Cross equating to 1020kg.

In terms of origin, Romania builds the lightest by average at 1287kg (the Ford Puma), followed by Portugal at 1325kg (Volkswagen T-Roc) and then Poland at 1326kg, a blend of the micro-sized Fiat 500 and Abarth 695 and the Volkswagen Caddy and Crafter.

While the full-size commercial Crafter may surprise you due to its large footprint, remember that vans (and cab chassis) are mostly air!

The big RAM 2500 and 3500 both sit over the 3500kg weight limit, making the American utes the heaviest cars you can buy today in Australia.

Adding to the top-20 weight class are five EVs (Mercedes-Benz EQV, eVito, EQS, EQC and the BMW i7) as well as the full Rolls-Royce portfolio. Rolls is the third heaviest brand by average, at 2587kg, coming in behind Ineos at 2644kg and RAM at 3252kg.

Strangely, the United States isn't the heaviest country of origin with the US figure of 2133kg a whole 44kg lighter than the 2177kg average of Slovakia, home to heavyweight Audi Q7 and Q8 variants, their Porsche Cayenne and Volkswagen Touareg cousins, plus the Land Rover Defender and Discovery.

Breaking down the vehicle segments, we can see there are plenty of categories where the average weight is still under two tonnes, but not very far under. Interestingly, if you lined up one of each of all 22 small cars on sale, they would weigh about the same as 13 people movers.

We've calculated an average weight of each new car manufacturer. You can search the list below:

As for where Australian cars are sourced from, scan the map below to see what the average weight of all supplied vehicles from around the world are: