√China’s LDV Deliver 9 van ends Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 23-year winning streak

The LDV Deliver 9 has ended the 23-year winning streak of the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter in the large delivery van class – as the Chinese brand filled two of the top four spots across the category.

China’s LDV Deliver 9 has claimed a major victory in only its second year on sale – outselling the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter in the large van class last year and bringing two decades of dominance to an end.

While the Toyota HiAce topped the van segment across all sizes last year – with the Hyundai Staria Load finishing in second place – two vans from Chinese manufacturer LDV were the third and fourth best-sellers across the van market, ahead of familiar models such as the Ford Transit and Volkswagen Transporter.

The biggest upset in the van sales race in Australia in 2022 was the LDV Deliver 9 large van ending the 23-year winning streak of the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter since that model was introduced locally in 1998.

Official figures from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) show 2966 examples of the Deliver 9 van were reported as sold last year (excluding passenger variants), an increase of 61 per cent compared to the prior year.

This compares to 2685 examples of the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van (excluding passenger variants) reported as sold in Australia in 2022, down 10 per cent from the year prior.

The result earned the LDV Deliver 9 victory on the large van sales charts for the first time.

Across the entire van category – split across all sizes – the Toyota HiAce again dominated (8748 reported as sold last year), outselling its nearest rival, the Hyundai Staria Load (3291) by more than two-to-one.

In third and fourth in terms of sales volume across all van types were the LDV G10 mid-size van (3159) and LDV Deliver 9 large van (2966).

The popularity of the LDV delivery vans (and the LDV T60 ute) helped drive LDV to record sales in Australia last year, with 16,269 examples reported as sold across all LDV nameplates – the eighth successive year of year-on-year growth, after debuting in the local market with just 214 sales in 2014.

The surge in sales of Chinese vans came as models from Europe faltered amid ongoing stock shortages: Ford Transit Custom (1709 reported as sold in 2022, down 31 per cent), Renault Trafic (1449 reported as sold, down 31 per cent) and Volkswagen Transporter (1362 reported as sold, down 21 per cent).

Widespread lockdowns during the global pandemic over the past two years saw a sharp increase in home deliveries which, in turn, drove record sales of vans.

In the five years leading up to the pandemic (2015 to 2019), an average of 19,500 new vans were reported as sold in Australia each year.

However, annual sales of new vans in Australia peaked at 25,900 in the middle of the pandemic, and limboed to 23,060 – the second highest figure on record – last year amid production delays and shipping bottlenecks for delivery vehicles, which require extra space on car-carrying ships due to their taller rooflines.

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