18 June 2015

New Zealand Car Sales By Brand : 1975-84

A 1975 Austin 1300. Very popular in NZ

Getting sales data for this period for NZ car sales is a challenge. I did manage to put this together and it gives an insight into what was going on and it was a time of great change. The NZ market had a high import duty on fully built up cars, so assembly from kits (CKD) was the only way to sell in any numbers.

In 1978 Japan became the main source of new cars, overtaking the UK where the car industry was failing due to underinvestment. For GM, the emphasis went on Holden and Vauxhall was phased out. Hillman was replaced by Mitsubishi and Honda took over from BLMC. As factories switched their source, sudden shifts in volume occurred. Japanese success also affected smaller assemblers such as VW as well.

BLMC had been the biggest company in 1975 but soon slumped as Honda profited greatly when the assembler switched to that brand. Mitsubishi's leap from 1975 to 1980 was mirrored by the fall of Hillman. The artificial assembly situation created a sudden swing to Asia as can be seen by the colours below.

One thing you cannot see in the chart was how Ford was changing too. It had been sourcing cars from the UK but was changing to Mazda cars, which started being assembled instead. Ford had recently taken a share of Mazda and rebadged some of its cars to be sold as Ford's in certain regions of the world.


Brand 1975 1980 1983 1984

Ford 15,374 15,144 15,964 20,730

Mitsubishi 1,425 13,620 12,240 15,235

Toyota 6,858 12,174 8,931 14,949

Honda 841 7,675 10,161 10,598

Holden/GM 7,576 6,882 8,537 10,155

Nissan 6,778 5,613 7,483 9,428

Mazda 3,864 4,510 5,075 7,151

Subaru 154 1,264 1,516 2,334

Daihatsu 136 192 1,052 1,550

Suzuki 43 95 633 910

Lada
203 305 595

Hyundai

236 576

Fiat 501 169 165 560

BLMC 16,215 3,964 164 264

BMW
49 196 211

Audi
63 157 169

Renault 539 48 458 150

Peugeot 479 82 77 131

Volvo
62 203 104

Alfa Romeo
144 130 92

Mercedes 137 88 74 78

Citroen 129 49 69 68

Talbot

134 64

Hillman 8,946 1,480


Vauxhall 5,413 1,404


Chrysler 1,970 560


Škoda 808 124


VW 662



Others 853 108 117 316

Total 79,701 75,766 74,077 96,418

Picture Source: KiwiMotoring.

For sales from 1984-89, just click here.

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