VFACTS 2021: Winners and losers

New-vehicle sales increased by almost 15 per cent in Australia last year, but if you scratch the surface of this resurgence you’ll find that many car companies are in crisis management as customers are now forced to wait up to 12 months for the cars they’ve ordered.

As well as facing a long wait, many customers are also being asked to accept lower-specified cars than the ones they signed up for – or else cancel their order altogether.

The supply crisis, which you can put down as a consequence of ongoing setbacks related to the global pandemic, deepened in the final quarter of 2021 when industry sales deteriorated rapidly with year-on-year declines of eight per cent (October), 15 per cent (November) and 18 per cent (December).

These downturns are measured against the market coming out a record-low sales environment in 2020, and take us back to figures not seen since the global financial crisis.

So with this in mind, nominating winners and losers when it comes to car brands in Australia last year has as much to do with external issues outside each company’s control as it does with the actual sales figures and other factors within their remit.

Some of the clear winners – such as Toyota – are working overtime to keep disgruntled customers happy and orders intact, while the ‘losers’ – Honda, for one – are in that position due to the changing nature of their business.

No question, Toyota was the undisputed winner in 2021 after achieving market leadership for the 25th time with its 10th successive year of 200,000-plus sales – twice as many cars as any other brand.

Toyota’s senior managers also admit they’re humbled by the fact that customers are sticking with the brand and not cancelling orders in the face of unprecedented waiting times for some of its most popular models.

A year-long wait for delivery of the Toyota RAV4 is not one of the stats the company is highlighting. But it’s impossible to overlook the fact that the market leader for the past 19 years in a row continues to harbour the top-selling model in Australia (HiLux, for the sixth year running), as well as the top SUV and hybrid model (RAV4 in both cases) and number-one passenger car (Corolla).

As well as leading the ute class (and commercial vehicles in total) with HiLux, mid-size SUVs with RAV4 and small cars with Corolla, Toyota has class leaders in mid-size passenger cars (Camry, unbeaten for 28 years), large SUVs (Prado), full-size 4x4s (LandCruiser) and vans and buses (HiAce).

Beyond Brand T, Kia impressed with fifth position in the marketplace overall – less than 5000 units away from its once-dominant sister brand Hyundai in third – while Chinese car-maker MG cracked the top 10 for the first time, finishing ninth.

Indeed, Chinese cars rose to fourth position among the most popular countries of origin for the first time last year, overtaking Germany and the US to now sit behind our leading source nations of Japan (first), then Thailand (where most utes are built) and Korea.

GWM/Haval racked up 18,000 sales last year, more than tripling its tally to beat well-established brands like Honda and Suzuki to take 14th position in the market overall.

It’s not quite knocking on the door of the top 10 in the same fashion as Isuzu UTE (which almost toppled Subaru to enter that coveted chart), but demonstrates yet again that Chinese brands are a force to be reckoned with in Australia.

Among individual models, the ageing Ford Ranger broke more records to hold its place as the best-selling 4x4 ute and finish a close second to HiLux as Australia’s Top Model, while MG took class honours with both the MG3 (light cars) and ZS (small SUVs).

We can’t overlook the frenzied Toyota LandCruiser sales last year – an all-time-record of almost 50,000 units for the LC nameplate if you throw together 70 Series, 200 Series, the new 300 and Prado.

The appetite for full-size pick-ups also grew last year with more than 4000 RAM trucks converted to right-hand drive through local programs that now has Ford and Toyota looking harder than ever at their own operations to get in on the act.

Electric cars? Yes, record numbers were achieved as new models entered the market and incentives were put in place to encourage buyers.

The figures show 5149 EVs were sold through all major brands other than the market leader Tesla, which refuses to report its sales, so you may as well triple that number to get closer to the actual mark for the industry.

It’s a drop in the ocean compared to sales of combustion-engined vehicles, but a tidal wave of EVs is coming in the years ahead and Australians showed in 2021 that they really do want to purchase low-emissions cars.

Just shy of 74,000 hybrids were sold last year, helping electrified cars reach 7.85 per cent of all light vehicle sales in our market (excluding heavy commercials) – even without Tesla in the mix.

Chrysler finally pulled into the wayside stop during 2021 as FCA Australia officially withdrew the American brand from the market in November.

The premium brand in the Fiat-Chrysler (aka Stellantis) stable, Alfa Romeo, also continued to struggle last year, finding only 618 sales across the nation – down 15.8 per cent on 2021.

In the Jaguar Land Rover garage, the cat brand suffered a 7.8 per cent downturn while the off-road division managed only a 1.9 per cent increase over the depressed 2020 market, although much of that can be attributed to supply problems back at the factory.

Mercedes-Benz maintained market leadership in the prestige sector, but it too posted another annual decline in both cars (including SUVs) and vans, the latter down more than 30 per cent.

Citroen continued its slide into obscurity with 175 sales for the full 12 months of trading, while crosstown rival Renault only just managed to post a positive result last year after suffering some serious falls in recent months.

Arguably the biggest loser was Honda as it charts a new course as a premium-oriented brand under an agency-style business regime that has seen model lines withdrawn, entry-level variants dropped and a high sticker price applied to key models such as the new Civic small hatch, which starts at $47,200.

Once a fixture of the top 10 brands, Honda finished 15th last year with 17,562 sales – down 39.5 per cent on 2021’s woeful market.

That’s a big fall for a company that back in 2014 was determined to return to 60,000 annual sales (and was still beyond 51,000 in 2018), but now says it only needs 20,000 sales a year to remain viable.