The surprising vehicles Australians are no longer buying – the top 10 best-selling cars are revealed

For the first time ever, Australians in the top ten are shunning traditional passenger cars that don’t have anything in the shape of a sedan or sedan.

The car year of 2023 will be remembered as a year in which there were no two-wheel drive cars for several months of the year.

Only 16 percent of new cars sold in October were cars with lower ground clearance, according to sales data from the Federal Chamber of the Automotive Industry.

And with Teslas missing last month for the first time this year, there was nothing in the monthly top ten that even remotely resembled a passenger car that was shaped like a sedan or sedan.

The Toyota Corolla and Hyundai i30 also did not appear.

Utes took the top three spots, with Ford Ranger, Toyota HiLux and Isuzu D-Max topping the monthly sales charts as the millionth car was sold in 2023.

Australians are shunning traditional passenger cars for the first time as none are in the top ten (pictured is a Mazda3 in current form – Australia’s best seller in 2011 and 2012 two generations ago).

Utes took the top three spots, with Ford Ranger (pictured), Toyota HiLux and Isuzu D-Max topping the monthly sales charts as the millionth car was sold in 2023

The other seven spots went to mid- to large-size SUVs or all-wheel drives, including Toyota RAV4, Toyota LandCruiser, MG ZS, Mazda CX-5, Toyota Prado, Mitsubishi Outlander and Ford Everest.

The majority of cars sold in Australia are now SUVs with a market share of 55 percent.

Back in 2015, the Toyota Corolla passenger car was Australia’s best-selling brand and model that year.

That was four years after the Mazda3 became the first fully imported car ever to top the annual sales charts.

The Holden Commodore was the last Australian-made car to top the annual sales list in 2010 after an unbroken 15-year run.

Ford hasn’t won an annual sales race since the Australian-made Falcon was No. 1 in 1995.

But the Australian-designed and Thai-built Ford Ranger was No. 1 in October for the fifth time in 2023, while the latest Ford Everest, based on the same platform, made the monthly top ten list for the first time.

While Australia stopped producing cars in 2017, commercial vehicles continue to top the sales charts, 90 years after Ford Australia engineer Louis “Lewis” Bandt designed the Ford “coupe utility” in Geelong.

The Toyota HiLux has been Australia’s best car every year since 2016 and looks set to retain that crown in 2023, having won the sales race five times so far, but faces stiff competition from the more modern Ford Ranger.

Toyota remains the best-selling brand with a market share of 17.4 percent year to date, more than double Mazda’s 8.4 percent and Ford’s 6.9 percent.

All-electric automaker Tesla was also missing from the top ten monthly sales charts for the first time in 2023, as neither the Model Y nor Model 3 appeared in October.

The other seven spots went to mid- to large-size SUVs or four-wheel drives, including the Toyota RAV4, Toyota LandCruiser (pictured), MG ZS, Mazda CX-5, Toyota Prado, Mitsubishi Outlander and Ford Everest

The Model 3 was the closest thing to a passenger car, appearing in January and February as the only model on the list that resembled a sedan.

The Model Y, a hatch-shaped SUV, played that role in March.

The Hyundai i30 made the top ten in April, May and June, while the Toyota Corolla made the top 10 in July, August and September.

So far in 2023, 1,006,095 new vehicles have been sold, of which 176,646 were cars – a miserable share of 17.6 percent.

In comparison, 564,840 were SUVs or 56 percent of new vehicles sold, with Utes – so-called light commercial vehicles – accounting for 22 percent with 221,774 vehicles ordered.