Toyota Hilux has outsold Ford Ranger at the halfway point of the year

WE'VE hit the halfway point of the year and the overall 4x4 sales race is tantalisingly close between – no surprises here – Ford’s Ranger and Toyota’s Hilux, with the Japanese brand leading the race by a meagre 21 units.

It has also been a solid year for the Mitsubishi Triton 4x4 which has been purchased 12,187 times. In fact, the Hilux, Ranger and Triton were the three best-selling overall new cars in June when you combine 4x4 and 4x2 variants. The Triton even pipped the always popular Toyota Corolla (3780 sales) and Hyundai i30 (3547 sales).

In June, the Ranger 4x4 outsold the Hilux 4x4 by 204 units, while the Triton had a 36 per cent increase in sales month-to-month. Mercedes-Benz’s new X-Class on the other hand, only found its way to 218 new homes.

The LCV market remains steady, with 28,346 sales recorded for June 2018 (28,253 sales were recorded in June 2017). So far in 2018, 122,895 LCV sales have been recorded (at the same time last year, that number was 118,995). The LCV segment now accounts for 20.3 per cent of the total market, up from June 2017’s 19.8 per cent.

SUV sales continue to strengthen and the segment holds the majority share of overall sales (43.1 per cent). In fact, June 2018 results indicate that SUV sales have increased by 9.3 per cent compared to June 2017.

This is despite an overall market slump – new-car sales are down 2.9 per cent – compared to the same time last year (130,300 versus 134,171), which is largely attributed to the falling passenger car market (down 17.9 per cent compared to June 2017).