January 2019 New Car Sales Review - Part 2

In our first piece covering January’s new car sales, we looked into overall sales across the industry as well as a breakdown by vehicle segment. This time around we’ll focus on how different makes and models fared last month.

New car sales by brand

As we’ve become used to seeing, Toyota sits well atop the charts as Australia’s highest selling brand. What was perhaps less expected however, was a 4.3% growth in its sales in January, when the broader new car market saw sales slump by 7.4%. With 15,961 units registered, nearly one-fifth of all cars sold last month were Toyota.

Among the leading brands, which sold at least 2000 units in the month, only two other manufacturers increased sales over January 2018. These included Mitsubishi, up 26.7% to 6,669 units, and Kia, up 2.6% to 4,651 units.

Meanwhile, Holden and Ford continue to see sharp declines in their sales, with units plunging 27.1% and 21.7% respectively. They weren’t alone however, as the likes of Nissan, Subaru and Mercedes-Benz had a month to forget.

New car sales by model

Of the top 10 vehicles sold last month, the Toyota HiLux retained its position as the best-selling vehicle in the marketplace. It even managed to increase sales by 2.4% to 3,951 units. The next 3 vehicles in the rankings all took a heavy hit compared with January 2018, but nevertheless remain firmly entrenched in the charts as regulars.

Despite its drop in sales, the team behind the Mazda 3 would be pleased with the final result, seeing it leapfrog Ford’s highly successful Ranger into second place. Keen-eyed observers will also notice a significant jump (108.5%) in sales for the Mitsubishi ASX, which comes from a low base and is largely due to an anomaly arising from sales timing.

The split between passenger vehicles, light commercial vehicles and SUVs was fairly balanced across the top 10, with light commercial representing a higher portion. While this contradicts overall segment data, which showed a lower than average portion of light commercial vehicles sold in January, this can be explained. It is evident sales for light commercial vehicles are mostly concentrated in these leading vehicles, with less variety in range. This is in contrast passenger vehicles and SUVs where there is a larger number of models available among low sellers, thus reversing the trend across the overall data.

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