By Matt Wade, Craig Butt and Angus Delaney
Utes rule Sydney’s west, Japanese runabouts dominate the middle ring and inner-city types favour European brands.
Herald analysis of the city’s most popular cars reveals a distinctive pattern: the Toyota Hilux ute is the most prevalent vehicle in outer Sydney, while the Volkswagen Golf is top in harbourside neighbourhoods. The city’s most common car, the Toyota Corolla, reigns across a swath of suburbia in between.
What about your area? Type your postcode into the box below to discover the 10 most popular car models in your postcode.
Those three models were most popular in 94 per cent of Greater Sydney’s postcodes – the Mazda 3 topped a dozen postcodes and the Ford Ranger in four.
Luxury cars were prominent among the top 10 models in postcodes across Sydney’s east. The Porsche Macan was the fifth most common car in Darling Point, sixth in Bellevue Hill and Double Bay, seventh in Dover Heights and eighth in Woollahra. To put that in perspective, the Macan was the 128th most common vehicle in NSW, with 7648 registrations statewide.
In Darling Point, Range Rovers, the Porsche 911, the BMW X1 and the Mercedes-Benz C200 were all in the top 10.
One postcode had a Tesla among the top 10 – the Tesla Model Y was the eighth most prevalent car registered in Sydney’s CBD.
The once-popular Holden Commodore, which stopped production in 2017, was still the top car in the Blue Haven-Budgewoi neighbourhood on the Central Coast (postcode 2262). The Commodore was also No. 1 in the Wollongong suburb of Berkeley and in Windale, near Newcastle.
The analysis is based on federal Department of Transport data that tracks the registration of 171 vehicle brands and more than 2000 vehicle models across NSW postcodes.
The Corolla is by far Sydney’s most popular car – it was the top model in almost two-thirds of postcodes. It was also the most prevalent vehicle in NSW, with 269,165 registrations.
The Hilux is the state’s second most common vehicle (251,919) and most popular in 50 Sydney postcodes including Glenmore Park, near Penrith. Census data shows more plumbers and carpenters live in Glenmore Park than other neighbourhoods.
The Volkswagen Golf was the most popular vehicle in 26 postcodes, including Mosman, Bondi, Balgowlah, Darlinghurst and Manly.
A spokesperson from the Department of Transport said vehicle registration figures inform decision-making for public and private sectors.
“This data is made publicly available to support governments, industry and other stakeholders to better understand Australia’s current vehicle fleet and how it is changing over time,” the spokesperson said.
NSW had more than a dozen London Taxis, at least six De Loreans (the car that transported Doc Brown and Marty McFly to the year 1955 in Back to the Future), and at least three Goggomobils, a German micro-car best known in Australia for its appearance in a 1990s Yellow Pages TV advertisement.
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