This is the first time Ford has made a return to the top of the Aussie sales chart in 28 years.
The Aussie sales chart provided a bit of a shock recently, as once all the numbers for 2023 has been tallied up, it revealed for the Ford Ranger to have come up on top.
The first time the Blue Oval has topped the charts once more down under in 28 years (with the last time being in 1995 with the EF Falcon), the bigger news here is nevertheless for the Ranger to have toppled the almighty Toyota Hilux in terms of popularity down under. The aforementioned Japanese pickup became the first commercial vehicle to nab Australia’s annual sales crown back in 2016, and has had a firm grip on it for the subsequent 7 years till 2023.
Rather excitingly too, it was actually anyone’s game going into December, with Ford’s pickup actually trailing Hilux registrations by 379 units at the end of November. A massive surge of 7,767 registrations in the last month of 2023 however ensured for the Blue Oval to comfortably claim the crown from Toyota, which incidentally had managed to shift 5,143 pickups last month.
Now delving deeper into the overall sales data, it shows that Australians have snapped up a total of 63,356 Rangers in 2023. Up a staggering 33% over its 2022 sales, that healthy figure can then be split further to 5,095 4×2 pickups (up 17.1%) and a subsequent 58,261 four-wheel drive models (up 35.1%).
Toyota on the other hand lost out on the top spot by just 2,245 vehicles, with annual Hilux sales down by 5% too from 2022 with just 61,111 registrations. The Japanese automaker however is likely not to be all that concerned about this slight dip in sales for its pickup down under, especially given that its 2023 deliveries still marks the only second time in its history to have surpassed 60,000 sales.
Sales success of Aussie-designed and developed Ranger is largely attributed to it being the much newer vehicle of the two, with this iteration of Ford pickup arriving only in 2022 relative to the Toyota’s 2015 launch date. The Blue Oval’s wider variant choice that includes the off-road-ready Raptor and luxury-focused Platinum is something too that the Hilux fails to adequately match.
That said, Ford did certainly have to really work for that sales crown in 2023. Supply chain issues means that the Blue Oval literally took the step of leasing its own vehicle carrier ship, Grand Quest, in order to get Rangers and Everests down under.
“There are so many people who play a role in the success of a vehicle,” said Ford Australia president and CEO Andrew Birkic. “For Ranger, that’s our team of designers, engineers and everyone at Ford who pours their passion into making the vehicle what it is, our dealers who are passionate about serving their customers and communities, and ultimately our Ranger customers whose passion for their vehicle is what gets us up in the morning,” he added.
Looking at the bigger picture in the Aussie new car market now, Ford was Australia’s third best-selling brand in 2023 with a cumulative sales figure of 87,800 units. Up 31.8% over 2022, it is would be unsurprising to note that the Ranger and Everest accounted for the lion’s share of sales.
Toyota on the other hand, while losing out on the model sales crown, was still to be far above everybody else in terms of overall sales. Even with a 6.8% decline in sales in 2023, the Japanese auto giant still managed to deliver 215,240 vehicles over the last 12 months, which is more than twice as many as runner-up Mazda that managed 100,008 sales over there last year.
The Aussie market overall meanwhile set an all-time record in 2023 too, with 1,216,780 vehicles delivered. The previous record was set in 2017, with 1,189,116 vehicles delivered.
