New vehicle registrations have dropped by more than a quarter in July compared to the same month last year, which the Motor Industry Association says is because of rising costs of living, high fuel prices, vehicle supply constraints and a weakening New Zealand economy.
Registrations of 8049 passenger cars and SUV’s were down 19.4% (1935 units) compared to July 2021, while registrations of 3052 new commercial vehicles were down 39.8% (2,017 units) on July last year and are likely to remain down in coming months due to the effect of the Clean Car Programme.
Overall, the market dropped 26.3% (3952 units) for the month, which has dropped the year-to-date figures down 6.6% compared to the first seven months of 2021.
Damien O’Carroll/Stuff
The Toyota Hilux was the most popular vehicle of the month, beating the Rav4 and Mitsubishi Outlander.
The Toyota Hilux claimed the top spot for the month with 957 units sold, followed by the Toyota RAV4 (690 units) with the Mitsubishi Outlander in third place (685 units). Year to date the top three models are the Toyota Hilux (5739 units), followed by the Mitsubishi Outlander (5597 units) and the Ford Ranger (5475 units).
READ MORE:
* Ute sales crash, hybrids up in April
* Record new car sales as buyers rush to beat Clean Car fees
* Tesla Model 3 crushes Hilux in September sales
It pays to mention Ford has only just released the new Ranger into the wild, so it will be interesting to see how that shakes things up next month.
Richard Bosselman/Stuff
The newest Ford Ranger only just released, so we’ll have to wait until next month to see how popular it ends up.
There were 550 fully electric vehicles registered last month, with the most popular model being the Peugeot e-208 (92 units) followed by the Polestar 2 (80 units) and the Kia EV6 with 40 units.
Registrations of plug-in hybrids were steady with 635 units registered for the month. The top-selling models were the Mitsubishi Outlander (280 units) followed by the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross (164 units) and then the Hyundai Ioniq (35 units).
Finally, there were 1773 hybrids registered in the month of July, with the top-selling models being the Toyota RAV4 (530 units) followed by the Toyota Highlander (227 units) and the Toyota Yaris (123 units). This is up on the 1166 hybrids registered last month.
Damien O’Carroll
Toyota’s RAV4 was the best-selling hybrid for July.
Toyota was the market leader for passenger and SUV registrations with 22% of the market (1770 units), followed by Mitsubishi with 15% (1169 units) and then Suzuki with 9% market share (719 units).
Mitsubishi retained the market share lead for passenger and SUV year to date with 16% share (1194 units), followed by Toyota with 14% share (8793 units) and then Kia with 11% share (6812 units).
The top-selling passenger and SUV models for the month were the Toyota RAV4 (690 units) closely followed by the Mitsubishi Outlander (685 units) and the Toyota Highlander (335 units).
