Emissions charges likely won’t keep the Ford traydeck from cleaning up in 2023.

BEING bumped down a peg in November from its customary spot of the top selling new product for any month seems unlikely to keep Ranger, a top target of Clean Car, from achieving yet again as the country’s strongest annual seller.

Ford’s one tonne ute achieved 1086 units last month, a decent achievement given that it is still subject to an emissions penalty that, the brand agrees, has inspired up to a third of potential customers from committing until that imposition disappears. 

Clean Car’s dissolution has long been signalled to occur at the end of this month, though now there is talk that this might happen even sooner, to avoid a big hit on rebate funding, which comes out of the Climate Emergency Fund. 

There’s proposition the administration has other plans for that money and is also wary of a last-minute EV buy-up rush, which if realised could become a multi-million dollar hit.

As is, though hiked EV interest was a factor of the November registrations statistics, it was not so great as to become crucial, according to data that has been published by a specialist industry magazine ahead of a public share from Waka Kotahi, expected today.

The AutoTalkcom.nz website said the figures it has seen suggest new passenger vehicle sales continued on a positive note in November, while commercial registrations continued in their artificially-generated slump.

Passenger vehicle registration were up 2.8 percent year-on-year for the month to 11,491 units from 11,176.

Ranger count contributes to commercial registrations that were down 32 percent to 3022 units from 4445 a year ago.

Year-to-date, 9710 Rangers have been registered. The next strongest performer is RAV4 … but it’s 1394 units behind. 

Does Toyota’s model have the goods? In November, it showed it has the ability; being the top selling model for the month with 1419 units. However, that was a herculean effort, well about the RAV4’s usual performance.

Making up the shortfall would logically require a repeat of that, plus a scenario when hardly any Rangers were registered. That’s never happened. 

Ford’s model remaining the country’s top new choice will extend its run of dominance to almost a decade.

In passenger in November, Toyota was market leader with 3019 units registered, an 82.5 percent gain for a 26.3 percent market share. There is conjecture the dominant make is largely making ground by restocking rental fleets; it has just bought one itself.

Second after RAV4 was the Mitsubishi Outlander on 557, followed by the Tesla Model Y on 544, the Toyota Corolla on 486 and the MG4 on 468.

Mitsubishi recorded 1068 registrations to place second in passenger, down 18.2 percent for a 9.3 percent market share. MG came next with 898 units, a big lift.

Ranger’s count kept Ford on top of the commercial sector, where it claimed 1135 units overall, but that count was down 27.8 percent compared to how it performed in November last year. Toyota took second on 597, a 43.4 percent drop; it’s Hilux was second strongest selling commercial, with 420 registrations, followed by the Toyota Hiace on 169.