COLDER May weather and a cooling housing market appeared to slow the vehicle market as the Top 20 made relatively minor adjustments to its ladder, retaining power to the utes while sending some favourites to the freezer.

There was also some upward movement in the more conventional passenger cars with Camry up three notches to 17th, its Corolla sibling in third (down one from the previous month), and stable results from other small cars such as the Hyundai i30, Mazda3, Kia Cerato and Volkswagen Golf (which lifted three places).

Toyota’s HiLux remained in first position, followed by the Ford Ranger – notably the only Ford in the first 50 places – with the Toyota RAV4 jumping four spaces to seventh and Nissan’s heavily advertised X-Trail up five spots to 16th.

Where there are winners there are losers: The Hyundai Tucson made a spectacular dive to 12th from its sixth position in April; Holden’s Colorado went to 13th (from 10th previously and joining only the Commodore in 31st to represent the family in the top 50); while Toyota’s family-focused 4WD, the Prado, slipped to 14th from ninth.

It wasn’t a welcome picture for some of the smaller SUVs, with the once-fancied Mazda CX-3 and Subaru XV dropping out of the Top 20.

May results show SUVs on the march – again – and that’s reflected in the sales ladder with the segment having eight models in the Top 20 with utes taking up another six.