Sales of SUVs continued to provide strong momentum to Australia’s new car market last month, according to Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) VFACTS data.

April sales were down slightly year on year but year to date (YTD) were up 3.3% ahead of 2017.

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Total industry sales for April dipped 0.2% to 82,930 and the YTD tally was 374,468.

SUVs accounted for 43.6% of April volume, passenger cars 33.2% and light commercial vehicles 19.4%.

Among the segments, as noted, SUVs were the stand out performers as sales of small models rose 33.3%, medium climbed 12.8%, large lifted 3.7% and upper large surged 20.6%.

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SUV sales to private and business customers showed strong April gains, up 15.3% and 17.5% respectively. Private light commercial sales dipped by 13.6%, while light commercial business sales fell 3.6% during April.

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Among passenger car segments, microcars had another good month with a sales gain of 8.6%.

FCAI CEO Tony Weber said though April was the first month of 2018 in which the industry had not bettered its results of last year, the industry was tracking strongly.

“There’s good reason to be confident about how sales nationally are tracking given we are a third of the way through the calendar year.

“The market dynamic has changed with the growth of SUVs but brands have adapted quickly to that change and the new products coming into those growth segments clearly have strong consumer appeal.”

The Toyota Hilux light commercial was the top selling single model during April with 3,596 sales, followed by the Toyota Corolla with 2,979, then the Ford Ranger (2,796), Mazda 3 (2,261) and Toyota LandCruiser (2,018).

Toyota was the April market leader with a 20.1% share, followed by Mazda (9.3%), Hyundai (8.6%), Mitsubishi (6.6%) and Ford (5.8%).