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Ford does not share Toyota's pessimism about the future of the ute market, as the Ford Ranger tops sales charts for the third year running.
As the Ford Ranger becomes the most sold car in Australia for the third year running, Ford Australia Marketing Director Ambrose Henderson "absolutely" believes the brand can sustain its chart-topping sales figures.
“Absolutely, we think we can, I mean clearly we sustained it for the three years running so far.” Henderson said.
Ford sold 56,555 Rangers in 2025, down from 62,953 in 2024 and 63,356 in 2023.
Henderson projected confidence in a continued demand for utes in Australia: “What our customers tell us is that a ute continues to offer the mix of versatility, work, family, and play that other products and segments are unable to deliver on,” Henderson said.
This optimistic outlook for Australia’s ute segment from Ford Australia’s marketing boss seemingly contrasts comments made by his Toyota counterpart in early 2025.
Toyota Australia’s then-sales and marketing boss Sean Hanley told media last February that he thought Australia had reached “peak-ute” and it was likely an SUV could soon be topping Australia’s annual best sellers charts.
"Of course, I would think this does beg the question – could an SUV become Australia's best-selling vehicle [over a calendar year]?
"Or maybe we should put it another way, have we in fact reached what I call 'peak ute'? The answer to both questions, I think, is very likely.
"We know that ute buyers can look forward to having much greater choice available to them. But despite that total ute sales are likely, I think, to remain fairly static, and a more fragmented segment will make it increasingly difficult for a single model to dominate the sales charts.” Said Hanley.
Total ute sales in Australia (excluding American pick-ups) grew by 2.7 per cent in 2025, with 235,614 utes sold compared to 229,219 in 2024.
SUV sales in Australia grew by 5.8 per cent in 2025, with 747,419 SUVs sold compared to 704,410 in 2024.
The second best-selling vehicle in Australia was the Toyota RAV4 SUV with 51,947 sales, narrowly outselling the Toyota Hilux ute (51,297).
A new generation of the Toyota RAV4 SUV, Australia's second best-selling car in 2025, will go on sale this year. A new generation of the best-selling SUV could boost RAV4 sales even further in 2026.
“We've had an amazing response from customers from retail through to fleet telling us that this is a product with a level of capability that doesn't exist in the market today, and that it is really needed, and that extra capability is in really high demand and we expect that to actually grow.” Henderson said.
In addition to the single-cab chassis, super-cab chassis, and dual-cab chassis variants now in dealerships, the Ford Ranger Super Duty will gain higher priced dual-cab pick-up, XLT dual-cab chassis, and XLT dual-cab pick-up variants in mid-2026.
Max is the News Publishing Coordinator for Drive. He enjoys creating engaging digital content, including videos, podcasts, interactive maps, and graphs. Prior to Drive, he studied at Monash University and gained experience working for various publications. He grew up playing Burnout 3: Takedown on the PS2 and was disappointed when real life car races didn’t have the same physics.
