Top 10 most popular vehicles in Australia – January 2017

Australian new car sales figures for January show the Mazda3 and Toyota Corolla leapfrogging the Ford Ranger, Toyota HiLux and Toyota Camry, to come in at first and second place respectively. With lower buyer activity due to the holiday period and no end-of-calendar-year or end-of-financial-year incentives, sales were predictably lower across the board compared to last month.

The Camry is also notably absent from not only the top ten, but the top twenty. Despite selling 4850 Camrys in December 2016, the Big T’s locally-built mid-sized sedan could only muster 580 sales – around half as many as the 20th placed Hyundai Accent. However, that’s more a reflection of commercial fleet buying cycles as it is about demand from the private market.

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The Toyota HiLux, which managed to take the crown as 2016’s highest-selling vehicle, fell down the finishing order in January, to sit in third place behind the Corolla. Though it couldn’t repeat last month’s 3225-unit figure, the HiLux nevertheless racked up a healthy 2702 sales in January – 361 more than the same period in 2016.

Toyota also retained its position as top-selling manufacturer in January, recording 12,554 sales across its Australian showrooms last month.

The Ford Ranger dropped from third place to fourth in January with 2662 sales between its 4x4 and 4x2 variants, while the Hyundai i30 and Holden Commodore followed in fifth and sixth – one position up on their respective December results. Though now well into its final year of production, the arrival of new special-edition models helped Commodore improve on its January 2016 result by a huge 718 units, for a total of 1960 January 2017 sales.

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Having slid to eighth position in December, the Mitsubishi Triton disappeared from the top-ten ranking in January allowing the Mazda CX-5 to move from ninth to seventh. With 1924 sales in January, the CX-5 was also one of few carry-over top ten cars to improve its sales relative to December – the other being the Corolla.

It’s a solid result for the CX-5, which also sold 174 cars more last month than it did in January 2016. It’s one of the oldest cars in Mazda’s local showrooms right now and an all-new replacement is coming later this year, yet it appears buyers are still in love with the Japanese automaker’s mid-sized SUV.

The Isuzu D-Max, like the Triton, also fell out the top ten, leaving three slots free for the Nissan X-Trail, Hyundai Tucson and Mazda CX-3 to move up into eight, ninth and tenth places respectively – all of which are no strangers to being in the top ten.

TOP 10 PASSENGER CARS FOR JANUARY 2017*