In our first piece covering May’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
May proved to be no kinder to the nation’s leading car brands than April, with best-selling cars hit hard once again by the impact of COVID-19.
While the entire top ten saw their sales shrink, just BMW managed to defy what was otherwise a drastic sales plunge across the rest of the group. The German luxury auto-maker’s sales eased just 2%, which was a remarkable result in light of its market positioning and the overall economic climate. It marks the second month in a row where the brand has performed resiliently given current circumstances.
After a period of strong outperformance, Kia finally felt the impact of decreased buying confidence. Its sales plunged 50% last month compared with May 2019, which was as bad as any other leading car brand.
Outside of the top ten, the likes of MG, Ram and Haval all recorded sales growth, albeit from a low base. Holden has dropped to 13th position among best-selling brands, with its clearance stock now starting to dwindle.
New car sales by model
Expectedly, all of the leading models on the market saw a significant drop in sales last month.
The Hyundai i30 and Mazda3 fared the worst of the bunch, with sales diving 59% and 55% respectively when compared with the corresponding figure from May 2019. This meant that the two popular small passenger vehicles plummeted down the list, whereas normally they’d be up among the top-half of the list.
Meanwhile, at the top of the list sales of the Toyota HiLux fell 16%, the Ford Ranger declined 33% and the Toyota RAV4 collapsed 20%.
Despite its strong showing mentioned earlier, BMW does not see any of its models fare among the leading models, which is due to the popularity that spans across the breadth of its line-up as opposed to specifically in one or two units.
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