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Best month for used imported cars since 2004

Posted on 06 September, 2017

Registrations of used imported passenger vehicles were up 11.5 per cent compared to August last year, with 1490 more sales bringing this month’s total to 14,483. This makes it the third best month ever, only beaten by 14,709 units in July 2003 and 14,877 sales of fresh imports in March 2004. Year to date used imported cars are also on a high, with sales totalling 108,865 for the eight months of 2017, up 10,555 units, an increase of 1319 per month compared to last year. Toyota has retained the top spot with a market share for the month of 24.6 per cent with 3267 registrations. The battle for top model is a lot closer with the Mazda Axela, Suzuki Swift and Nissan Tiida making up the top three. They hold 4.7, 4.2 and 4 per cent market share respectively. The stand out for August however was the Nissan Leaf with sales of 177 units, an increase of 205 per cent on the 58 sales in August 2016.  The Leaf has now climbed to gain 1 per cent of total used imported cars. In terms of the regions, Timaru went from 99 sales in August last year to 144 last month, an increase of 45.5 per cent. Invercargill and New Plymouth also did well compared to a year earlier showing increases of 33.1 and 31.9 per cent respectively.