Nissan agrees with Toyota: Peak ute has arrived

While Nisan agrees with Toyota that peak ute has been reached in Australia, it still expects sales of its new Navara ute to increase over time.

The new Mitsubishi Triton-based D27 Nissan Navara had its global reveal in Adelaide, Australia last night and it goes on-sale in March 2026.

It will launch into an increasingly busy segment that has prompted Toyota’s peak ute prediction.

The world’s largest car maker, Toyota, essentially forecasts ute sales will no longer grow in Australia and finer slices of the sales pie are going to be shared amongst the growing number of competitors.

Toyota expects HiLux sales will settle beyond 40,000, whereas they have climbed over 60,000 in the recent past.

Nissan Oceania (essentially Australia and New Zealand) managing director Andrew Humberstone said he was “aligned to what Toyota is saying”.

“But I think in our case, we're starting from a different place,” he added. “We have a product that's at the end of its life cycle.

“And certainly the time for this new product is absolutely now in terms of the new Navara. So we're quite optimistic. We think volumes will exceed our expectations.”

Nissan sold around 10,000 examples of the aged D23 Navara in Australia in 2024. That’s less than half the annual number achieved on multiple occasions by the previous D40 generation with its V6 turbo-diesel engine.

But because Nissan has rationalised its new Navara back to only 4x4 dual cab pick-up auto for the foreseeable future, Humberstone admits there will be an initial sale hit.

The rationalisation was made because 90 per cent of Navara buyers have been opting for the pick-up, leaving only 10 per cent for single cab, king cab, cab chassis and 4x2 versions.

All of those options have been dropped.

“I don't want to really talk specifically in numbers, but we see certainly an increase in volume,” Humberstone said.

“Not in the short term because what we're doing is specifically looking at what is the range that we're going to offer.

“Whilst we reach 90 per cent of the customers, we also realise that there is effectively 10 per cent that we're not reaching,” he conceded.

While more ute players may mean smaller slices of the sales pie for established brands in the future, Humberstone added another wrinkle to the Toyota forecast that medium SUV sales will continue to rise. The Nissan exec saw buyer interest renewing other segments as well.

“I think there's a lot of movement across all segments,” he said.

“We're even seeing more interesting saloon cars now, which is becoming something which 12, 18 months ago was almost not talked about.”

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