The most popular cars registered in Victoria revealed

Victorians are holding on to their Holden Commodores with the vehicle the top registered car across the state despite new sales ceasing in 2020.

The Holden Commodore: gone but not forgotten

Despite ceasing local production in 2017 (and sales in 2020), the Holden Commodore is the most common car across the majority of Victorian LGAs, with 34 LGAs citing it as the top vehicle registered within their municipality. The car is a popular choice in both outer metropolitan and regional LGAs, being the top registered car in LGAs as far apart as the Mornington Peninsula, Corangamite and Wellington. 

The Holden Commodore isn’t the only Australian-built vehicle to still be extremely popular, with the Ford Falcon being the top registered vehicle in eight Victorian LGAs (and the fourth most registered vehicle across the state). Despite Greater Geelong being the former heartland for Ford, the Falcon is the second most popular car in the LGA, beaten out by the Holden Commodore.  

Victorians’ - and to a greater degree, Australia’s - penchant for holding onto their cars for a long time could partly explain why the Commodore and Falcon continue to be so popular across the state. BITRE data shows that the average age of registered vehicles across Australia was 11 years in 2022, up slightly from 10.8 years in 2021. In Victoria, the average age of registered vehicles sat at 10.84 years for 2022, above the ACT’s relatively young 9.89 years but well below Tasmania’s 12.97 years. 

The lag in new car supply, as well as the price appreciation and demand for used vehicles over the last few years, may have also contributed to the overall rise in registered vehicle age in Australia. With no Australian-built successors to the Commodore or Falcon on the horizon, fans of these large RWD sedans might also be hesitant to swap to a medium SUV, dual cab ute or small compact SUV – currently the most popular segments for Australian car shoppers.

^{Source: BITRE 2022 Motor Vehicles, Australia (31 January 2022), customised data extract via the Australian Automotive Association.}

Small cars for the big city

However, when it comes to Melbourne’s inner city LGAs like Merri-bek, Maribyrnong, Port Phillip, Yarra, Boroondara and Melbourne itself, the Toyota Corolla – Victoria's second most commonly registered vehicle – dominates. The legacy nameplate is the most common vehicle in 19 LGAs, all of which are within metropolitan Melbourne except for the Borough of Queenscliffe on the Bellarine Peninsula.  

Inner city LGAs that did not feature the Corolla as the top registered vehicle were instead led by comparable small cars like the Mazda3 (Australia’s top selling vehicle in 2012) in Bayside and Volkswagen Golf in Stonnington, sometimes considered the gateway vehicle to European motoring (the Golf is also notable for being the only European car to make the list). The Toyota Camry was also named one of Victoria’s most popular cars, being the top choice in the outer suburban LGA of Wyndham – not too far from the where the car was manufactured for 54 years in Altona Meadows.  

Unlike the Holden Commodore and the Ford Falcon, the Toyota Corolla’s success is helped in part by its longevity (it’s been in continuous production since 1966) and popularity, with the car being the top selling passenger car for nine years straight from 2013 to 2021.

Melbourne LGAs are dominated largely by Toyota Corollas in the inner regions and Holden Commodores in the outer regions.

Australia’s top selling car comes third

Victorians’ love of Toyota models is also evident in the popularity of the brand’s dual cab 4x4 and 4x2 ute, with the Toyota HiLux coming in third as the most registered car in 13 Victorian LGAs. Given the HiLux was the top selling car overall in Australia for 2022, the seventh consecutive year it has won that title, the only surprising thing should be that the ute isn’t higher on the list. While the Holden Commodore has appeal across the state, and the Toyota Corolla reigns supreme in the inner city, the HiLux is very much the vehicle of choice for regional motorists, being the top car in LGAs like Colac Otway, Hepburn and Indigo shires.  

Regional and rural LGAs that did not feature the Toyota HiLux as the most registered vehicle either tended towards the Holden Commodore, or opted for the Toyota Landcruiser (the fifth most registered car in Victoria), demonstrating the different vehicle preferences and needs of regional motorists compared to those in the city.

Regional and rural Victorian LGAs prefer either the Toyota HiLux, Holden Commodore or Ford Falcon.

Petrol powers on while SUVs get sidelined 

Conspicuously absent from Victoria’s top registered vehicles by LGA are compact and medium SUVs. Nameplates such as MG ZS, Mazda CX-5 and Toyota RAV4 are nowhere to be seen, despite being some of the top-selling vehicles in recent years. SUVs overall were the clear leader in the June 2023 sales data from Australia’s Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI), but given the average age of vehicles in Victoria, it may be some years yet before we see these SUV sales translate into the state's most registered vehicles.  

While electric vehicle ownership is increasing, no EVs were the most commonly registered car within any Victorian LGA, despite new EV-only brands like Tesla and BYD conquesting sales in the new car market. The Tesla Model Y mid-size SUV was named Australia’s best-selling passenger vehicle for June 2023, and the second best-selling vehicle overall for the month according to the FCAI, perhaps previewing the evolution we can expect to see in registration data over the next decade. 

On a grand scale, however, EVs still only make up around 0.5 per cent (roughly 83,000 vehicles) of Australia’s total vehicle fleet according to the Australian Electric Vehicle Industry Recap 2022. So, while EVs are increasingly sought after, they’re yet to crack the top registered vehicle charts in any LGA in Victoria or Australia.
 

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