New Zealand vehicles market in 2020 falls by 22.6% as the pandemic and lockdowns affect sales. Full-Year sales have been 119.609, the lowest annual volume since 2013. Kia (+12.7%) is the only brand on the leaderboard to report growth.
Market Trend
The New Zealand vehicles market was hit extremely harshly in 2020 as the global pandemic has impacted sales tremendously. In fact, the fall was so harsh that we recorded the lowest annual volume for the country since 2013.
The market has doubled between 2012 and 2017. Indeed, vehicle sales volume grew up from 100.000 in 2012 to 206.000 in 2017, hitting the current all-time record. However, in 2018 the total annual volume dropped sharply (-21.6%), with 162.056 units sold, followed by a 4.7% drop in 2019 with 154.482 sales.
After starting the year with a slight negative trend (-6.2%), the market quickly collapsed in March as the virus struck. The sharpest drop in sales this year was in April when sales declined by 90.4% and severe restrictions were implemented.
In the following months, the market recovered effectively, even growing by 3% in July, the only positive month in the entire year. Besides July, the entire second half of the year has been characterized by a double-digit drop in sales, ending with a fall of 27.8% in December.
Indeed, Full-Year sales for 2020 have been 119.609, reporting a decline of 22.6% compared to 2019.
Brand-wise, this year the leader Toyota (-31.1%) lost 2.1% market share, followed by Ford (-16.5%), which gained 0.7% share. Mitsubishi gained 0.3% share, falling 19.6%. Mazda reached 4th place (-26.4%), followed by Kia which was the only brand to increase sales, growing 12.7%.
Nissan lost 28.7%, followed by Hyundai (-27.6%) and Suzuki which jumped 1 spot and lost 7.6% sales. Closing the leaderboard we have Holden -down 5 spots- reporting the worst performance by losing 50.8% this year and Volkswagen losing 23.2%.
The most sold vehicle this year has been the Ford Ranger (-15.8%) with 7.984 units sold, followed by the Toyota Hilux, which lost 18.5% registering 5.807 new sales this year. The Toyota Rav4 (-4.7%) closes the podium by jumping 1 spot and reports 5.347 new units sold.
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales for all Brands, top 10 Manufacturers Group and top 10 Models.
