New-car sales January 2026: Ford Ranger on top, Toyota still dominates despite dropping market share, PHEV sales surge and ICE plunges

Australia’s 2026 recent-autos sales hump is off to a tough begin, with 87,753 sales recorded for the month of January, a legitimate magnify of 949 autos over January 2025.

This in overall is a truly early indicator that the Aussie market will all yet again reach recent heights in 2026, following 2025’s all-time sales document.

The supreme-selling mannequin in January changed into Ford Ranger (3403 items), with a dominant fetch over arch rival Toyota HiLux (2800) because the latter transitions its recent abilities into showrooms.

A Toyota Australia spokesperson told Chasing Vehicles that the moderately soft HiLux result owes vital to a ramp-up of inventory of the recent-abilities mannequin, launched in December, and the timing of inventory into showrooms displays the drop in automobile registrations.

The evergreen Mazda CX-5 (2289) changed into the most traditional passenger automobile within the predominant month of the 365 days, followed by Chery Tiggo 4 Reliable (2234) and Mitsubishi Outlander (1975).

A habitual sales winner, the Toyota RAV4 (1757), trusty scraped into the Prime 10, the mannequin within the present abilities’s twilight with its replacement soon for local begin. Ford Everest (1913), Hyundai Kona (1839), Isuzu D-Max (1798) and Haval Jolion (1789) total the 10 most effective-seller slots for January.

Constant with Toyota Australia, the strangely low RAV4 result is an on the spot outcomes of a constructing picture financial institution for the recent-gen mannequin, due in showrooms leisurely March. The local arm additionally talked about it has no longer provided hump-out deals on outgoing-gen RAV4 and HiLux models, which additionally impacts January figures for both models.

Toyota’s dominance waned a limited of (16.3 percent market half) over the circa 20-percent market half enjoyed in newest sales months. But while its 14,310 sales pale in contrast to the circa-18K sales recorded in January 2025, the Enormous T accumulated outsold its nearest rival Mazda (7692 items) by nearly two to one.

Kia had a notably sturdy January, coming in third (6600) above Ford (6116), with Hyundai (5856) rounding out the Prime Five.

Chinese language brands continue to penetrate the sexy discontinue of the sales market, with BYD (5001), GWM (4509), Chery (3780) and MG (3123) all scoring Prime 10 standings, with Japan’s Mitsubishi conserving out eighth space (4347).

Extra, China proved to very with out trouble sit because the 2d-greatest provide of newest autos with Aussie traders within the aid of Japan, with autos sold from China having grown by 68.6 percent all over the last 365 days.

SUVs remain the most traditional automobile kind in Australia through January, with Fifty three,666 sales in contrast with light commercials (17,995) and other (non-SUV) passenger autos (13,623). Each passenger autos (4.6 percent) and SUVs (1.0 percent) were up versus figures from January 2025, while light commercials were down a limited of (-2.5 percent).

Extra broken down, medium SUVs (21,785) proved most properly-most traditional by Aussie traders, followed by runt SUVs (15,067), 4×4 Opt-AmericaCab Chassis (13,650) and tremendous SUVs (11,412) with a miles gap to the fifth most traditional segment, runt passenger autos (5946).

By powertrain kind, PHEVs (5161) continue to abilities a fixed surge in recognition, with a whopping 170.5 percent rise over January 2025, albeit with a vital smaller market half (5.9 percent) than common (self-charging) hybrids (15,131 and 17.4 percent). BEVs (7409) accounted for 8.4 percent.

Petrol (33,144) managed to outsell hybrid (15,131) two to one, however the most traditional energy choice in Australia changed into down a chief 14 percent over January 2025 numbers. Diesel proved the 2d-most traditional powertrain of choice, with 24,439 recent oilers registered in January 2026.