Strongest November for new car sales in NZ

The Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross was the best selling plug-in hybrid. Photo: Andrei Diomidov Photography

New Zealand’s new car industry will be heading into the Christmas season buoyant after the strongest month of November on record for passenger and commercial vehicles. 

Motor Industry Association Chief Executive David Crawford says that there were 16,327 sales of new vehicles for the month of November 2021, an increase of 37.3% (4,438 units) on the same month in 2020.

Year to date there have been 153,362 registrations, an increase of 37.8% (42,123 units) compared to the first eleven months of 2020. 

The market remains buoyant despite stock levels remaining low. Recent shipments of new vehicles have helped to alleviate some of the long wait lists for popular models. 

Careful forward planning by distributors is reducing impacts of shipping constraints due to Covid-19 and microchip shortages, enabling a steady supply of new vehicles to the market.  

It was a record month of November for both passenger/SUV vehicles and commercial vehicles with 11,233 passenger and 5,118 commercial vehicles registered for the month. 

The top selling passenger and SUV models for the month were the Mitsubishi Outlander (1,017 units) followed by the Toyota Corolla (734 units) and the Toyota RAV4 (726 units).

Toyota retained the market lead for passenger and SUV registrations with 19% market share (2,129 units) followed by Mitsubishi with 17% (1,937 units) and then Kia with 10% market share (1,146 units). 

Ford retained the market lead with 32% market share (1,616 units) followed by Toyota with 19% (997 units) and Nissan third with 8% market share (416 units).

The Ford Ranger retained the top spot for the month of November as the bestselling commercial model with 30% share (1,538 units) followed by the Toyota Hilux with 13% share (662 units) and the Nissan Navara in third place with 8% market share (416 units). 

The top selling pure electric vehicles were the Tesla Model 3 (408 units) followed by the MG ZS (121 units) and the Hyundai Ioniq 5 (100 units). 

There were 432 plug-in hybrid electric vehicles registered in November. The top selling models were the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross (171 units) followed by the Mitsubishi Outlander (100 units) and then the MG HS (40 units). 

Hybrids continued their consistent strength with 1462 vehicles registered in the month of November. The top selling models were the Toyota RAV4 (553 units) followed by the Toyota Corolla (182 units) and Honda Jazz (130 units).