Sales of new V8 and diesel vehicles soared last year

New vehicle sales in Australia were affected by many factors in 2021, including lockdowns and supply chain challenges.

While that artificially restricted the number of vehicles some brands could sell, there were also other trends at play, such as some pace finally kicking in on the shift to EV and a love of just about anything that can go off-road.

Here are some of the surprises from the Aussie new-vehicle market in 2021.

Reckon we’re shunning diesel in a big way? Not quite… Sure, diesel-powered passenger cars have mostly fizzled out, but utes and SUVs are filling the diesel void.

In 2021, almost 33 per cent of the new vehicles Australians bought were diesels. That’s the highest percentage ever. While the figures aren’t easy to get prior to 2008 (when 20 per cent of new vehicle sales were diesels), it’s a safe bet they didn’t get close to the 2021 tally.

That’s because Australia has only embraced diesel in the last couple of decades. Even in the 1990s many off-roaders and utes used petrol engines, whereas these days most are diesel.

It’s no secret that Toyota has long been the hybrid vehicle leader, but you might not know the Japanese brand is also the king of V8s.

Yes, of the 70,466 new hybrid vehicles sold in Australia in 2021, 65,491 of them (93 per cent) wore a Toyota badge. Of the remainder, 3604 were sold by Toyota’s luxury brand, Lexus, meaning together they accounted for 98 per cent of all hybrids sold here.

But Toyota also sold a record 25,457 V8s in 2021, all of them LandCruisers – either in 70 Series guise or the more luxurious 200 Series. So more than 10 per cent of all Toyotas sold last year were V8s – and 58 per cent of all V8s sold were Toyotas.

And with the waiting list for a new LandCruiser 70 Series now extending out to 2024 the boom in V8 and diesel sales looks set to continue for a while.

It was only in 2015 when sales of prestige and luxury cars exceeded one in 10 sales. But in 2021 they topped a record 11.3 per cent of the market, helped almost entirely by Tesla, which is now the fourth best-selling luxury brand (outdone only by BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz).

Australia’s top-selling luxury brand was Mercedes-Benz (28,348), closely followed by BMW (24,891). And the top-selling prestige cars was the Tesla Model 3, outselling the next best-seller by about three-to-one.

2021 was the year SUVs finally made up more than half of Australia’s new car market. The 531,700 SUVs sold throughout the year made up 50.1 per cent of overall sales of 1,061,925 (once Tesla’s sales figures are added to the figures published by the FCAI, which don’t include Tesla).

To put the growth in perspective, in 1996 just 7.7 per cent of vehicles sold were what was previously known as all terrain wagons.

We all love talking about sports cars, but we’re not big on buying them. Last year sports cars accounted for just 0.94 per cent of the new car market – only marginally more than the next worst year of 2004, when they made up 0.93 per cent of the market.

And the best year for sports cars in Australia? It was 2016, when they made up 2.33 per cent off the back of the first global Ford Mustang and the then-new Toyota 86/Subaru BRZ.

Holden may have closed its factory doors in 2017, but 2021 was the first year since the inception of Holden cars in 1948 that no Holdens were sold.

It’s a sad demise for a brand that once accounted for more than half of all new-vehicle sales – and one that accounted for more than one in five sales as recently as 2002.

Holden was once a powerhouse that produced iconic nameplates such as Kingswood, Monaro, Commodore, Torana and Rodeo.

Or, at least, its cars. In 2021, 8.3 per cent of the new vehicles sold in Australia were sourced from China. That’s more than double the number of German-made cars we bought.

Many were Chinese-branded models, such as Havals, GWMs and LDVs. But many were from more familiar brands, such as MG, Tesla and Volvo.

Joining that list since last year were Polestar and BYD, with a host of Chinese brands to follow, including Chery, Ora and Tank.

Electric cars account for less than two per cent of the Aussie new-car market, but in the luxury space that number is 12 per cent – or almost one in eight luxury cars sold.

OK, so it’s heavily bolstered by Tesla, which made up 85 per cent of all luxury EVs. But there are some impressive performances within the mix.

For example, 12 per cent of all Porsches sold in Australia were the battery-electric Taycan, and eight per cent of MINIs sold in Australia were fully electric.

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