Toyota and Ford lead historic year for new-car registrations in NZ

The final pieces of the puzzle concerning New Zealand's thirst for new vehicles in 2018 has been published by the Motor Industry Association. 

I say thirst, because — despite talk of lower consumer confidence in 2018 — New Zealand's new-car registrations hit an all-time high for the fifth year in a row. All in all, 161,770 new cars were registered for our roads last year, an increase of 1646 vehicles over 2017. 

To put that number in perspective, it's almost twice as many vehicles as the 84,640 that were registered in 2011. Although to be fair, we were dealing with a little global financial crisis at that time.

With everything said and done, Toyota wound up being New Zealand's favourite manufacturer, and conversely the Ford Ranger was New Zealand's favourite vehicle. 

Toyota made up 20 per cent of the year's registrations, with 32,360 vehicles, while the Ranger netted 9904 registrations all by itself. 

In the manufacturer stakes, Toyota's closest rival was naturally Ford, although they were well behind on an end-of-year registration figure of 16366 vehicles. Holden (13,046), Mitsubishi (12,320), and Mazda (12,238) completed the top five. Note that these figures also include pre-registrations.

The Ranger's nearest rival meanwhile was the Toyota Hilux, which ended 2018 on 8086 registrations. The Toyota Corolla was again the most popular passenger car, scooping third overall on 7300 registrations. The Toyota RAV4 (4964) and Mitsubishi Triton (4720) rounded out the top five overall. Full top-15 charts are available below.

While the Corolla's number is quite impressive (especially given the perceived dominance of SUVs and utes in the current climate), it's worth noting that over half of its registrations in 2018 (4665) stemmed from rental companies. Although even if you deducted that figure, the Corolla would only fall to sixth in the passenger car stakes, and second behind the Suzuki Swift if you remove SUVs from the equation. 

“The December 2018 figures are in and despite a softening market with ups and down during the year, 2018 is the fifth year in a row of record new vehicle registrations," says Motor Industry Association CEO David Crawford.

"While the month of December was down 3.6% (420 units) on December 2017 it still took the 2018 calendar year to an all-time new record, with a total of 161,519 registrations on corrected figures.

"Registrations for the 2018 year were 1% (1648 units) above the 2017 outturn.”

Top 15 new vehicle registrations (combined, full year)

Top 15 new passenger car/SUV registrations (full year)

Top 15 new commercial vehicle registrations (full year)

Top 15 new-car/SUV models (full year)

Top 15 new commercial models (full year)

Top 15 rental vehicles (full year)