The Hyundai i30 has thrown a spanner into Australia’s small car segment by leaping ahead of traditional top-sellers, the Toyota Corolla and Mazda 3, five months into 2016.
The Hyundai i30 hatch has been Australia’s top-selling vehicle for three months in succession, on the back of sharp campaign pricing kicking off at $19,990 drive-away with a free automatic transmission.
Australia is, incidentally, the world’s biggest single market for the Hyundai i30.
Year-to-date, the i30 has managed 16,425 sales here, up a massive 60 per cent over 2015. By comparison, the Corolla (last year’s sales champion) has managed 16,117 (down 8.4 per cent), while the Mazda 3 sits at 15,976 (down 2 per cent).
This is all the more impressive when you factor in the decline in the small car segment of 3.7 per cent YTD, as SUVs continue their upward trajectory.
What makes the Hyundai i30’s stellar sales success yet more laudable is that they apply only to the hatch and now-discontinued wagon. The Elantra, Hyundai’s small sedan offering, is counted separately, unlike the Corolla and Mazda 3 hatch/sedan ranges.
If you add in the 2272 Elantra sales YTD, Hyundai’s lead in the small car market grows even greater.
Together, alongside the Accent (Australia’s top-selling light car), they’ve driven Hyundai’s passenger car sales to 6.3 per cent growth this year, contrasting a market-wide fall in passenger vehicles of 5.4 per cent. Hyundai’s passenger car total of 28,303 is second only to Toyota, and well ahead of Mazda.
As we’ve reported, a new-generation Hyundai i30 is due to premiere in October. We’ve already seen mules undergoing development testing here in Australia.
However, despite being the top-selling vehicle three months in a row, the i30 is not quite the top-selling nameplate for the whole year. Number one is actually the Toyota HiLux ute, which has combined 4×4 and 4×2 sales of 16,558 units.
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Hyundai i30 sales overtake Toyota Corolla and Mazda 3
