Kiwis haven’t had their fill of new cars yet. Another strong month of sales.

NEW vehicle ownership continues to be a favoured Kiwi preoccupation with the industry reporting July as being another healthy month for registrations count.

Even though the latest dataset shows a diminished interest over June, that’s no cause for alarm or disappointment, the Motor Industry Assocation has suggested when sharing the July counts today.

The body that acts on behalf of new vehicle importers reminds that the mid-point month of the year was a record period. Also, it says, the July 2017 counts are still above those for the same month last year – a count that, back then, was considered pretty decent in its own right.

So anyway, down to the numbers. MIA chief executive officer David Crawford reports 11,631 new vehicle regoes for last month. That’s just 61 up on July 2016, a 0.5 per4cent increase.

Year to date, though, the new vehicle sector is 12.6 percent, or 10,033 units, ahead of the same year-to-date period last year, with 90,737 vehicles registered against 80,704 to the end of July 2016.

Passenger car and SUV registrations of 7605 units were down 80 units, a one percent drop, on July 2016.

The gain came with commercial vehicles, a segment that includes one tonne utes – which, of course, are increasingly bought for family recreational use. But never mind that. Insofar as the statisticians are concerned, utes are tradie workhorses, pure and simple.

Anyway, for the month of July the top selling models were all light commercial vehicles. There were 4026 commercials plated up, up 165 units (4.3 percent) on July 2016.

Utes were the commercial favourite. Ford Ranger only just hangs onto the top spot with 655 units, followed ever so closely by the Toyota Hilux with 654 units, and the Mitsubishi Triton with 342 units. Year to date the top three selling models are Ford Ranger with 5631 units followed by the Toyota Hilux with 4718 units and the Holden Colorado with 2715 units.

In the commercial sector, Toyota was again the market leader with 21 percent (845 units) followed by Ford with 19 percent (746 units) and Holden a distant third with nine market share (350 units).

Looking at the whole of the market, brand-wise there’s been no change at the top. Toyota also remains the overall market leader with 16 percent market share (1820 units), followed by Ford with 10 percent (1190 units) and Mazda with nine percent market share (1017 units).

Toyota was also the market leader for passenger and SUV registrations with 13 percent market share (975 units) followed by Mazda with 11 percent (811 units) and Mitsubishi with eight percent market share (592 units).

The top selling passenger and SUV models for the month were the Kia Sportage (330 units) followed by the Mazda CX-5 (309 units) and the Mitsubishi Outlander (279 units).