VFACTS October: Ford Ranger back on top
New Ranger outmuscles HiLux as top-selling car last month, while two Chinese brands among top 10The Ford Ranger has returned to the winner’s circle to claim top honours as Australia’s biggest-selling vehicle in October, outmuscling the Toyota HiLux as customer deliveries continue apace for the Blue Oval brand’s hugely popular new-generation ute.
As the chokehold on vehicle supply chains across the industry begins to loosen, Ford racked up a phenomenal 5682 Ranger sales last month – just as it was crowned carsales’ Best Dual-Cab 4x4 Ute for 2022 – which was 792 units ahead of the HiLux in second (4890) and well clear of the Toyota RAV4 in third (3222).
Similarly buoyed by 1271 sales of the new-generation Ford Everest family SUV (closely related to Ranger), Ford rocketed to an unaccustomed second place overall in the marketplace with 7823 sales – miles behind the dominant leader Toyota (18,259) but enough to place ahead of Kia (6380), Mitsubishi (5982), Mazda (5775) and Hyundai (5289).
The continued run of strong sales for Kia now places the Korean brand in third position for the year to date – behind Toyota and Mazda – and leaves only two months of trading left for it to claim its first-ever podium place.
It’s one of several big stories unfolding in the Aussie auto industry this year, with the unremitting rise of Chinese car-makers MG and GWM also drawing attention away from the established leading brands.
This was again demonstrated by MG holding a comfortable seventh position in the marketplace last month (5031), and for the year to date, while GWM also cracked into the list of top 10 brands in October for the first time with 2462 sales across its GWM Ute and Haval SUV line-up.
That saw MG comfortably outsell Volkswagen (3199) and Isuzu Ute (2865) – the MG ZS standing tall as one of the top five best-selling models and the MG3 the top-selling passenger car – while GWM’s 10th place kept a variety of big-name brands out in the general pack – Subaru (2318), Nissan (1247) and Honda (1112) among them.
Mercedes-Benz Cars (1719) was also out in the cold, and surrendered its prestige market leadership for the month to BMW (1918).
Fewer customer deliveries of the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y saw the US electric car brand’s sales taper off to 1109 sales in October after record results in August (3397) and September (5969), but Tesla remains the dominant force in the fast-rising EV market, where 2098 sales were found across all brands last month.
The bigger picture
The 87,299 new vehicle registrations recorded across all brands combined in October represents a 16.9 per cent increase over the corresponding month last year and keeps the industry at an eerily similar position to where it was at the same point last year – 898,429 sales, up 0.9 per cent.
This is the third successive month of double-digit year-on-year growth, however it signals only a small improvement in vehicle supplies that have cruelled the industry’s recovery after more than two years of downtrodden sales sparked by the global pandemic and made worse by an ongoing shortage of computer chips.
According to the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI), the current pattern of sales growth reflects more on supply issues occurring a year ago rather than any substantial increases at the moment.
That said, FCAI chief executive Tony Weber said the latest results indicate that car companies are making progress with overcoming logistical challenges.
“Globally, car manufacturers have been heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. This October figure is a positive sign that supply chains are recovering and consistency is returning to the marketplace, but we still have some way to go before it returns to normal,” Weber said.
The bigger picture remains intact, which shows significant changes in brand preferences, a rising interest in EVs and overwhelming demand for SUVs and utes as the vehicles of choice.
SUVs and light-commercial vehicles accounted for 80.1 per cent of all new vehicles sold in October, leaving traditional passenger cars at 15.3 per cent.
From the top 10 vehicles, only the MG3 light hatch was in this latter category, with the balance divided between SUVs (six) and utes (three).
The Tesla Model Y was the top-selling electric car with 1076 examples of the premium mid-size SUV delivered to customers – more than half of all EVs across all brands combined.
But putting this into further context, the 2098 total EV sales in Australia last month represented just 2.5 per cent of total new vehicle sales (excluding heavy commercial vehicles), with traditional petrol-engined cars at 54.1 per cent, diesels at 34.5 per cent and hybrids at 8.8 per cent.
Top 10 brands (2022 year to date):
1. Toyota – 194,669
2. Mazda – 79,669
3. Kia – 66,580
4. Mitsubishi – 66,505
5. Hyundai – 63,392
6. Ford – 53,298
7. MG – 38,891
8. Isuzu Ute – 30,020
9. Subaru – 28,264
10. Volkswagen – 24,842
Top 10 vehicles (October 2022):
1. Ford Ranger – 5628
2. Toyota HiLux – 4884
3. Toyota RAV4 – 3222
4. Mazda CX-5 – 2352
5. MG ZS – 2293
6. Isuzu D-MAX – 1951
7. Kia Sportage – 1877
8. MG3 – 1823
9. Toyota LandCruiser – 1767
10. Mitsubishi ASX – 1734
Related: VFACTS September: Tesla smashes sales records
Related: VFACTS August: Tesla takes top-10 sales spot
Related: VFACTS July: Toyota HiLux wipes the floor with them all
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