Australian new car sales in 2018 were down on both 2016 and 2017 numbers with sales in December falling 14.3 percent. Toyota HiLux finished the year as the country’s best-selling vehicle.
Sales of new vehicles in December fell by 14.3 percent (15,292) realising 87,528 sales for the month compared to the 102,820 for the same month in 2017. Sales for the year realised 1,153,111 which is down on both 2017 and 2016.
The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) Chief Executive Tony Weber acknowledged the lower result in 2018, saying: “New vehicle sales results in 2018 reflect a challenging climate across the Australian economy including a slowing housing market, tightening of money lending and the drought”.
While the market was down, SUVs continued their solid growth now accounting for 43 percent of the new car market in Australia.
“Australian consumers continue to value the comfort, flexibility and utility of SUVs, which collectively accounted for 43 per cent of the market in 2018. We predicted this trend to continue last year, and this has certainly been the case” Mr Weber said.
Light commercial vehicles followed suit with the Toyota HiLux finishing the year as the best-selling vehicle in 2018 with 51,705 units sold. The Ford Ranmger finished close behind it on 42,144, followed by the Toyota Corolla (35,320), the Mazda 3 (31,065) and the Hyundai i30 (28,188).
Across the brands, Toyota again led the market in 2018 with 18.8 percent market share, followed by Mazda (9.7 percent), Hyundai (8.2 percent), Mitsubishi (7.4 percent) and Ford (6 percent).
Holden continued its spectacular decline year on year with a yearly total of 60,751 down from 90,306 in 2017.
