The new car market has achieved its best October registration result on record, and the second biggest sales month ever, boosted by strong passenger, commercial and rental sales by market leader Toyota.
"There were 15,530 new vehicle registrations for the month of October, making it the strongest month of October on record and the second strongest month of any month ever," said David Crawford, cheif executive officer of the Motor Industry Association (MIA).
"It was only the second time the new vehicle market has past 15,000 registrations in a month, the other being in June this year."
Toyota's charge was lead by the Toyota Corolla (1772 units) which accounted for 16 per cent of total registrations in October.
The Corolla was the month's bestselling model with over double the amount of registrations as its nearest competitor, but over 90 per cent of Corolla sales in October came from the rental market (1589 units.)
Behind the Corolla in the passenger and SUV segment, the top-five sellers were the Toyota RAV4 (479 units), Kia Sportage (354 units), Toyota Highlander (334 units) and Mitsubishi ASX (323 units).
Unsurprising then that Toyota remains the overall market leader with 29 per cent market share (4,457 units) - equating to almost six new car registrations every hour. Ford followed with ten per cent (1530 units) and Holden with nine per cent (1341 units).
Toyota was also the leading in the commercial secor with 24 per cent (1,047 units) followed by Ford with 21 per cent (948 units) and Holden with eight per cent (335 units).
The Ford Ranger regained the top position as the bestselling commercial model with 19 per cent share (835 units) followed by the Toyota Hilux with 17 per cent share (762 units).
Year to date, the Ford Ranger remains both the top commercial vehicle model and the top model overall with 7,950 registrations compared to 7,045 for the Toyota Hilux.
Vehicle segmentation for the month of October reflected the strong monthly registrations of the Toyota Corolla. The top segments were small vehicles with 20 per cent share, followed by the SUV medium segment with 15 per cent and Pick Up/Chassis Cab 4x4 segment with 13 per cent market share.
Mercedes-Benz (191 units) was the top premium manufacturer in October, followed by BMW (142 units) and Audi (127 units).
"Registrations were 9.83 percent (11,986 units) year to date above this time in 2016 and for the month were up 5.6 per cent (821 units) on October 2016,” said Crawford.
“The 2017 new vehicle market is expected to easily break through the 150,000 new vehicles mark for the first time.”
-Driven