I couldn’t help but have a quiet chuckle the other day. Having spent a few days on the road up and down the North Island, I was intrigued by the number of new Ford Rangers on the road. They seem to be everywhere. Of course, when something is new, it tends to grab attention until it becomes so common it blends into the scenery. But I had another suspicion front of mind each time another Ranger came barrelling over the horizon.

It’s been 15 months since the government launched its Clean Car Discount programme. While the criteria have seen a tweak or two, the basic idea remains: get Kiwis out of their fossil-fuel-burning, gas-guzzling, CO₂-emitting internal-combustion vehicles and into low- or zero-emission alternatives. At the time, utes were placed firmly in the crosshairs – remember all the commotion about the ‘ute tax’ that came into effect earlier this year?

In August 2021, I wrote that I didn’t expect much impact from the ‘ute tax’. Order books were filling up. It seems utes – not just the new Ranger – are still hot property.

Indeed, the Motor Industry Association’s new vehicle sales report for August, issued on 2 September, paints the picture:

·      14,690 registrations of new vehicles for August. “The strongest month of August on record, largely due to shipments arriving, allowing back orders to be filled.”
·      Registrations of 3750 new commercial vehicles were up 73.5% (1589 units) on August 2021. “Registrations of light commercial vehicles is recovering near to what it was prior to the imposition of Clean Car Discount fees.”
·      Ford Ranger (934 units) and Toyota Hilux (897 units) were the top-selling models in August, followed by the Tesla Model 3 (745 units).
·      Toyota Hilux (6634 units) and Ford Ranger (6408 units) are the top-selling models year-to-date, followed by the Mitsubishi Outlander (6272 units).
·      The Ford Ranger took the top spot in August as the best-selling commercial model, with 25% share (934 units) followed by the Toyota Hilux with 24% share (897 units) and the Mitsubishi Triton in third place with 8% market share (298
units).
·      The top market segments were the SUV medium segment (28% share), SUV compact vehicles (20% share), and the pick-up/chassis 4×4 segment (14% share.) Two top-selling SUVs were Teslas, the third Mitsubishi’s Outlander – a fair number of which I’ll bet were the plug-in hybrid variant.

These numbers all add up to the fact that Kiwis still love their utes and will continue to buy them – additional taxes be damned. A collective sigh of relief can likely be heard from Ford, Toyota and Mitsubishi dealerships around the country, especially after sales plummeted in April.

Naturally, a group of people in Wellington already knew this. What sane government wouldn’t find a reason to tax a product it knows the majority of the buyer pool wouldn’t overlook? That’s how this whole scheme works, after all – all those utes are helping to pay for all those Teslas.

On another note, in July, I wrote that I’d taken up the Graeme Dingle Foundation Drop for Youth fundraising challenge. The idea is to raise as much money as possible for the foundation and jump from 12,000ft to show Kiwi youth that daunting challenges can be overcome.

The foundation does hugely important work in this regard, helping New Zealand’s youth craft a positive future for themselves and the country, so any support for this cause is appreciated immensely.

If you’d like to back my jump, you can do so here: https://givealittle.co.nz/fundraiser/gavin-myers-drop-for-youth-wbop-2022.

Thanks heaps and take care,

Gavin Myers
Editor