Last year we lamented that the new vehicle market had narrowly missed breaching the magic 150,000 annual sales figure (146,753), which was still an all-time record, this year the market blew away the 150,000 barrier and barely missed storing through 160,000 finishing the year on 159,871 units. The growth is driven by a mix of consumer and business confidence plus strong growth in tourism driving large numbers of rental vehicle purchases to cope with demand.
Again, following recent trends, the place of conventional car categories in the top charts has been further diminished by the seemingly unstoppable twin attacks by SUV’s and utilities. Of the top five segments only small cars made the grade in third position (12%) and this is potentially under threat this year. Top segment was medium SUV’s (17%) followed by 4x4 utilities (14%) with Large SUV’s and Compact SUV’s each on 11% rounding out the top five segments. It’s not much better in the top model charts with only one passenger cars in the top 10, which is Corolla, sitting at third place beaten by both Ford Ranger and Toyota Hilux – in fact five of the top ten models are utilities plus one van the Toyota Hiace even makes number 10 showing the strength of the commercial market with three SUV’s also making it (Toyota RAV4, Kia Sportage and Mazda CX-5).
Toyota still strongly leads all markets (Passenger (19%), Commercial (22%) and Overall (20%), Mazda is second in the Passenger segment with nine percent, Ford comes close second in commercials at 20 percent and is also second overall with 11%.
