After a "big" October last year, October 2019 registrations in New Zealand were 10% lower year on year with 14,956 new vehicles registered, the local industry group said.
"October 2018 was always going to be a challenge to better as it remains the strongest months of sales ever in the MIA data set going back to 1975," the Motor Industry Association said.
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Overall year to date sales were down 4.8%, compared with the first 10 months of 2018, to 129,529 units.
"The month of October continued the up and down pattern for 2019, in what is a difficult and challenging market," said MIA CEO David Crawford.
Registrations of pure electric vehicles fell back to their modest rate now the order backlog for Tesla Model 3s had largely been satisfied, the MIA said.
The new Tesla broke into the NZ top three passenger/SUV model chart with 359 sold in September.
Registrations of 10,322 passenger and SUVs for October 2019 were down 9.6% on 2018 volume while commercial vehicle registrations fell 11.6% to 4,333.
The top selling models last month were the Toyota Corolla, RAV4 and Ford Ranger.
Toyota remained overall market leader with a 28% share (due to strong rental fleet sales as NZ heads into summer tourist season) followed by Ford and Mitsubishi, both with 8%.
