Toyota HiLux to remain king

The Toyota HiLux will easily retain its title as Australia’s top-selling vehicle – bar none – for a fifth consecutive year in 2020, but when it comes to 4x4 sales it could again play second fiddle to the Ford Ranger, which also has a higher proportion of more profitable private sales.

Toyota’s one-tonne workhorse has become a sales phenomena Down Under, where the HiLux notched up more than a million registrations in 2018 and more than 223,000 since the current, eighth generation was released in 2015, accounting for more than a fifth of Toyota’s total sales in that time.

Australia is now the world’s single biggest market for the Toyota HiLux outside of South East Asia, and the ute has been the nation’s best-selling light commercial vehicle for the past 22 years. It has found more homes than any other vehicle in the Northern Territory for the last 19 years, Queensland for the last 13 years and West Australia the last 12 years.

Now, this week’s launch of a substantial midlife makeover bringing significant design, performance, efficiency, ride/handling and towing improvement – for a price – makes the country’s dominant auto brand confident of its continued success.

“I think HiLux will continue to do well,” said Toyota Australia sales and marketing boss Sean Hanley. “I think overall HiLux sales will continue to be the number one selling vehicle or ute in the Australia market.

“Whether the sales go up or down will largely depend on the market trend. But I think Toyota will continue to have a good share of that … market.”

However, the Toyota HiLux faces arguably its toughest test yet over the next 18 months or so, when it enters the twilight of its life cycle as a host of new or upgraded rivals hit the market.

Beyond the mildly updated MY20.75 Ford Ranger line-up and all-new Isuzu D-MAX range also launched this week, the new Mazda BT-50 arrives in October, ahead of a heavily upgraded Nissan Navara in November and the all-new Great Wall P-Series ute late this year.

Redesigned versions of the Ranger, Mitsubishi Triton and Volkswagen Amarok will follow by 2022, and all of these utes attract a higher proportion of more profitable sales to private buyers.

To July this year the Toyota HiLux has racked up a seemingly unassailable total of 25,295 sales, versus 21,570 for the Ranger. But the Ranger remains the 4x4 leader, with 20,205 sales compared to the HiLux’s 19,327, although Toyota leads the low-volume 4x2 segment 5968 sales to 1365.

Dig a little deeper and it’s clear the success of the Toyota HiLux is due to fleet and business customers, rather than purchases by private individuals.

In the last 12 months, just 23 per cent of HiLux 4x2 sales went to private buyers, and just 26 per cent of HiLux 4x4s. That means 77 per cent of HiLux 4x2s sold went to non-private buyers and 74 per cent of HiLux 4x4s were bought by fleets or ABN holders.

Toyota wouldn’t say if fleet prices will increase as much as retail list prices, which are up by at least $1625 across the board (and $2680 more for its most popular single model the SR5 4x4 dual-cab), and therefore whether private buyers will subsidise HiLux purchases for businesses.

But at the same time as rivals like Isuzu are aiming to attract more fleet and 4x2 buyers, Hanley said Toyota expects the updated HiLux to continue to attract more private buyers.

“What we are seeing is a trend specifically on the higher-grade models of HiLux in the private market, but of course this has a very broad appeal across the HiLux range, and of course we have tool of trade workhorse type vehicles as well,” he said.

“So fleet is a considerable percentage of the sales albeit, we are seeing private increasing.”

Toyota Australia’s sales chief was less bullish when asked if the 2021 HiLux 4x4 can outsell the Ranger 4x4.

“It’s a very competitive market and I guess ultimately we are putting an offering in the market right now with this facelift HiLux that has been significantly changed. Also, we hope you see the changes in the drive component when you get the car,” said Hanley.

“Having said that this is a very, very competitive market. Ultimately I always answer that question in this way: the market will see to that, but we remain confident we are putting a truly good offering to the ute buying market of Australia and I am sure that HiLux – when they see the changes we have made – will be a vehicle worth putting on the shopping list.

“In answer to your question, the market will ultimately determine that, but we are confident we are putting a very, very good ute into the Australian market.”

Toyota’s outspoken local sales boss also stopped short of predicting sales of the updated HiLux will go up in the current economic environment.

“That will largely depend on the market,” he said. “We are of course in very uncertain times right now. It's very hard to predict where you want the market to be this year.”

More broadly, Hanley said it was also difficult to predict the behavior of an overall auto market in which Toyota is outperforming its rivals, but recently applied hefty prices across its Prado, Fortuner and new Yaris model lines too.

“Before we heard the word COVID-19 the automotive sector was facing challenges. Last year new vehicle sales across the board fell 7.8 per cent. This year the decline is almost 20 per cent, which is much better than we were facing four or five months ago,” he said.

“Toyota has been fortunate enough to out-perform the market in both periods, but let me tell you what it looked like at the end of March and, indeed, early April.

“We knew we had to develop an emergency response, equally we had to ensure we put ourselves in the best position to recover. The real question though, was about the timing. When do we order up again or even order down?

“We knew our decision would have profound impact on the operation and financial health of our own company, our finance company, our dealer network and of course, our suppliers.

“Ultimately the market will tell us if we got it right or wrong, but we remain confident in our plans, so much so I believe our brand will come out of this crisis in a stronger position than that with which we entered.

“Our market share was already consistently above 20 per cent and right now it remains well above that level, almost three percentage points ahead of last year.

“In saying that, as we continue to navigate through these profound times, being number one is not the top of our minds, because to me leadership is not about volume in isolation – it never has been.

“It's about trust, it’s about having an emotional connection with our customers, a deep understanding that enables us to meet their needs and even anticipate them.

“So rather than being focussed on sales I am much more interested in how we further cement trust in the Toyota brand, because by doing that we will build a sustainable business where sales volumes will largely take care of themselves.”