Utes are now officially Australia's most popular vehicles

The top-three biggest selling vehicles in Australia are utes, with the Mitsubishi Triton taking the third placing behind the Toyota HiLux and Ford Ranger that’s been long held by the Toyota Corolla hatchback.

Incredibly the Corolla – which has been Australia’s top-selling passenger car for several years – has slipped to seventh place behind the three utes, as well as the Mazda 3, Mazda CX-5 and Mitsubishi’s ASX.

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The Hyundai i30, Toyota’s LandCruiser and Toyota RAV4 make up the rest of the top ten.

Mitsubishi sold 3155 Tritons in February, which is 66 percent more than the same time last year. It’s rise to third place caps off an excellent run during previous months that saw its stocks rise during the run-out of the previous model that has continued with the facelifted version featuring additional safety features.

It’s February figure is just 222 less than Ranger, however it still has some way to catch the Hilux, of which 4431 were sold last month.

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It’s a different story for the Corolla, though, which has seen its fortunes dwindle since the introduction of the 12th-generation model last year.

February saw 2070 Corolla registrations, a 36 percent drop from the same time last year.

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While the new Corolla has been widely lauded as a significant improvement over the previous model in terms of driveability, the deletion of the base Ascent variant will have affected fleet sales, meaning the entry cost has risen from $20,190 to $22,870 for the manual gearbox-equipped Ascent Sport.

The Corolla’s woes have allowed the Mazda 3 (2655) to claim the top passenger car spot during its run-out phase, despite a 9.5 percent slump in sales compared to February 2018. The Hyundai i30 (1929) has also suffered a similar year-on-year drop of 11.6 percent.

Mazda’s medium-sized CX-5 (2357) has again claimed the overall top spot in SUV sales over the smaller Mitsubishi ASX (2122).

The RAV4 (1639), which is also in runout, saw an 11 percent drop, while the LandCruiser (1804), which includes both the 200 and 76 Series models, dropped by just 0.9 percent.

Sales by segment, February 2019

Passenger car – 27,151

SUV – 37,292

Light Commercial – 19,831

Top-5 models by popular segment

Model Feb 2019 YTD