Market Insight: Passenger cars on death watch

SUVs have swept the traditional passenger cars aside in terms of sales but an even bigger trend is revealed in Australia’s ongoing love affair with the trade-oriented ute.

Both for leisure and for work duties, the light-commercial vehicle sector has exploded in the past decade with annual sales up almost 56,000 units a year and percentage growth jumps from 17.8 per cent of the total vehicle market in 2012, to 24 per cent in 2021.

The ute – either Toyota’s HiLux or Ford’s Ranger – top the best-selling vehicle list in Australia each month. The HiLux in 2012 had a 3.5 per cent share of the entire vehicle market and now has 5.06 per cent, selling 52,801 units (13,214 as 4x2 and 39,587 as 4x4) last year.

It has already leapt last year’s total with the HiLux finding 54,680 homes in the first 10 months of this year and on track for a record of 66,000 units by the end of this year.

The Ford Ranger is similarly in demand. In 2012 it sold 18,097 units and although was Ford’s best selling model, was not far ahead of the sales of the Focus.

Six years later, in 2018, its sales had rocketed to 42,144 which was more than half Ford Australia’s total sales of the year and 10 times that of the Focus. In 2021, it made 50,279 sales or 4.8 per cent of the total vehicle market.

Utes alone are responsible for 21.3 per cent of the total market (2022 year-to-date October) – a step up from the 15.5 per cent stake when their primary role was hauling building materials.

Hand-in-hand with the rise of the light-commercial vehicle sector – and particularly the dual-purpose utes – has been the ongoing expansion of the SUV market.

SUVs outsold passenger cars for the first time in 2017, leapfrogging the traditional first choice vehicle type by about 15,000 units in that year.  Since then, it’s all been downhill for the car.

The SUV has long been popular in Australia. In 2012, when models that were essentially all-wheel drive station wagons mixed it with genuinely off-road-capable four-wheel drive offerings, the genre commanded a decent 27.6 per cent of the market compared with passenger cars at 51.7 per cent.

In 2017, SUVs represented 39 per cent of the market, relegating cars to hold a 37.8 per cent slice.

A year later that ratio moved to 43 per cent (SUVs) and 32.8 per cent and in this year to date 2022, it’s now 52.7 per cent (SUVs) and 19 per cent.

The lion’s share of the market can be reflected by the Toyota RAV4 that in 2012 sold 14,651 units or 4.8 per cent of the SUV segment (and 1.3 per cent of the total vehicle market). Back then, Toyota had five SUVs on sale – RAV4, FJ Cruiser, Kluger, Prado and LandCruiser.

In the first 10 months of 2022, the RAV4 has a 6.4 per cent segment share (and a substantial 3.4 per cent of the total market). Toyota is also far less reliant on one model in the burgeoning SUV segment, now boasting a selection of eight SUVs with the newer entrants including the Corolla Cross, Yaris Cross and C-HR.

The success of the SUV has also decimated the car offerings, with companies including Mitsubishi having phased out their last passenger cars – the Mirage city car was last to go – and five SUVs. It is the same at Nissan, with only the Nissan Z coupe and Leaf EV representing the passenger car among five SUVs.

Mazda has four cars and six SUVs; Since ditching the Fiesta and Focus Ford has just the Mustang coupe and three SUVs; Toyota has six cars and eight SUVs; Volkswagen has four cars and seven SUVs.