The throne was barely warm
Toyota’s RAV4 had a spectacular 2025. It sold 11,298 units in New Zealand, ending ten consecutive years of Ford Ranger dominance at the top of the sales chart. The Ranger dropped 17.5% to 9,681 units. For fleet procurement officers, lease companies, and dealership networks, the shift mattered. The best-selling nameplate shapes residual value assumptions, insurance pricing, and parts supply chains across the industry.
But the title defence is already faltering. By the end of February 2026, the RAV4 was more than 400 registrations behind the Ranger in year-to-date sales. January produced 641 registrations, a decent number that nonetheless falls short of the monthly pace needed to repeat 2025. The problem is not demand. It is supply.
Global production is the bottleneck
The sixth-generation RAV4 launched into NZ dealerships in early 2026, but Toyota is still ramping production worldwide. In the US, Toyota Motor North America reported Q1 2026 sales were essentially flat, pointing directly to tight RAV4 inventory as production catches up with demand. That same analysis warned that when supply tightens on a vehicle this significant, “the effects can ripple well beyond a single nameplate.”
New Zealand sits at the far end of a long supply chain, and MIA CEO Aimee Wiley described the dynamic plainly in April 2026: the country is “a long lead-time market, and supply pipelines were set against more subdued demand, so available stock has been drawn down quickly.” For fleet buyers who plan procurement quarters in advance, that is a scheduling nightmare.
Rental volumes propped up the 2025 crown
The RAV4’s dominance last year was not purely a retail story. Of those 11,298 units, 3,129 went to rental fleets, roughly 28% of total volume. Rental companies buy on allocation cycles. When supply of a new model is constrained, those bulk orders get delayed or redirected to alternatives.
Wiley noted in February that the early-2026 increase was “supported by higher rental registrations and steady business demand, but private registrations were slightly lower.” Strip out the fleet and rental prop, and the underlying private demand picture is more cautious than headlines suggest.
No safety rating makes a hard sell harder
The new RAV4 also launched without an ANCAP safety rating. Production delays pushed the model into 2026 ANCAP protocol territory, and Toyota has acknowledged it is working to update the vehicle to meet the new protocols. Vehicles already delivered before those updates will remain permanently unrated.
For private buyers, the Toyota badge probably carries enough trust. For fleet procurement officers who must justify vehicle choices to health and safety committees, an unrated vehicle creates paperwork and risk at a time when compliance expectations are tightening.
BYD is not waiting around
While Toyota wrestles with allocation, Chinese manufacturers are filling gaps. BYD grew 291.1% in NZ in 2025, lifting its market share from 0.8% to 2.7%. The BYD Shark 6 debuted directly at number 14 in the full-year rankings, peaking at sixth in June. In a total market that remains well below the 2021 record of 165,287 units, every point of share lost to a fast-growing competitor reshapes residual value curves and fleet planning assumptions.
The broader powertrain shift reinforces the competitive pressure. Hybrid share rose from 27% to 30% of new vehicle sales in 2025, and PHEVs nearly doubled to 5%. The new RAV4 introduces a PHEV variant to NZ for the first time, but that is precisely the spec most likely to be supply-constrained.
What fleet buyers should actually do
The lesson here is not that the RAV4 is in trouble. Toyota’s brand equity and hybrid proposition remain formidable. The lesson is that the NZ vehicle market is still an allocation game, not a demand game. The broader recovery to approximately 138,000 registrations in 2025 was solid but not robust. Wiley’s April assessment described “uneven economic conditions” with “limited momentum in the recovery”.
Businesses planning vehicle procurement based on last year’s availability will get caught short. The smart move is to lock in allocations early, build flexibility into fleet replacement cycles, and stop assuming that a model’s sales dominance translates into easy availability of the newest spec. In 2026, the car everyone wants is the car nobody can guarantee.
Sources
- Driven: How the Toyota RAV4 ended a decade of New Zealand sales dominance by the Ford Ranger (2026-01-01)
- Best Selling Cars Blog: New Zealand Full Year 2025 (2026-01)
- Car Expert NZ: Critical SUV lands in NZ – New Toyota RAV4 arrives in dealerships
- Motoring NZ: New car sales up, but caution still in air (2026-02-04)
- Motoring NZ: EV demand will outpace supply (2026-04-03)
- Toyota RAV4 faces early U.S. inventory pressure as ramp-up begins (2026-04-20)
- Autotalk: New RAV4 launches without ANCAP rating
- Autotalk: 2025 Market – RAV4 takes top spot as passenger sales drive recovery (2026-01-02)