New Car Sales May 2015: HiLux On Top As Pickup And SUV Boom Continues

Pickups hauling hard: Toyota’s HiLux back on top for May, followed by Mazda3, Corolla, Triton and Ranger.

SUVs and commercial vehicles continue to close the gap on passenger cars in Australia, with new VFACTS data this month revealing significant sales growth for the former and a slide for the latter.

SUV sales for May increased by 5.8 percent over the same period in 2014, contributing to a year-to-date increase of 13.5 percent for a total of 157,415 sales.

Sales of light commercial vehicles (LCV) increased 1.0 percent in May for a year-to-date growth of 3.6 percent and a total so far of 78,926 sales.

Passenger cars remain the best-selling segment with 204,366 year-to-date sales, although that figure is down 5.0 percent against the 215,152 sales achieved by the end of May 2014.

Overall, the market's 83,327 sales for May represent a decline of 1235 vehicles, or 1.3 percent, against the same period in 2014. (The FCAI notes that May 2015 had one less selling day than May 2014, resulting in an increase of 87.2 vehicle sales per day.)

Year-to-date sales for the industry are ahead at 452,577, however, marking a 2.5 percent increase.