Despite the impact Covid has had on the new car industry in 2020, new figures from the Motor Industry Association shows that sales fared better than expected.

When lockdown happened in March, the Motor Industry Association (MIA) predicted that car sales could be down by 35% for 2020. Instead, it was down 23% with many brands now struggling to get stock for Kiwis clambering to buy a new vehicle.

The total registrations for  2020 were 119,398, down 35,081 units for the previous year.  

“Although the 2020 market was down 23 per cent, the result is better than anticipated back April when we were in the depths of the Covid-19 lockdown period, where we thought the market could be down as much as 35 per cent by year end,” said MIA’s Chief Executive David Crawford.

“However, the market is still being affected by stock constraints for high volume models, which we expect to ease as the 2021 year progresses.”

The top three models for the month of December were the Ford Ranger (662 units), followed by the new model Toyota Hilux (443 units) with the Toyota RAV4 in third place (387 units).

The top three models for the 2020 year were the Ford Ranger (7975 units) followed by the Toyota Hilux (5796 units) and the Toyota RAV4 (5341 units). 

In December, Toyota remains the overall market leader with 19% market share (1,602 units), followed by Mitsubishi with 11% (945 units) and Ford in third spot also with 11% market share (911 units).

For 2020, the top three marques were Toyota with 17% market share (20,762 units) followed by Ford with 10% (12,334 units) and Mitsubishi with 9% share (10,306 units). 

Toyota regained the market leader position for passenger and SUV registrations with 18% market share (996 units) followed by Mitsubishi with 12% (694 units) and then Mazda with 11% market share (616 units). 

For the 2020 year, the top three passenger and SUV marques were Toyota with 16% market share (12,777 units) followed by Kia with 10% share (7,971 units) and Mitsubishi with 8% market share (6,457 units).

The top selling passenger and SUV models for the month were the Toyota RAV4 (387 units) followed by the Mitsubishi ASX (327 units) and the Mazda CX-5 (326 units).

For the year the top three passenger and SUV models were the Toyota RAV4 (5,341 units) followed by the KIA Sportage (2,907 units) and the Kia Seltos (2,611 units). 

There were 197 pure electric vehicles, 55 PHEV’s and 738 hybrid vehicles sold for the month. For the 2020 year there were 1,519 pure electric vehicles, 756 PHEV’s and 8664 Hybrids.

The Tesla Model 3 made it to the top 15 new car registrations in December with 81 cars sold.

In the premium segment, Mercedes-Benz remained number one with 1967 passenger vehicles registered, BMW was second with 1592 and Audi finished 2020 with 1496.