GWM wants to be a top-five auto brand in Australia ‘sustainably'
A record result in the first half of 2025 saw GWM knock off MG Motor Australia as the country's best-selling Chinese brand year-to-date, with 25,189 sales propelling it to seventh place among all brands – its highest position yet.
That puts it on track to sell 50,000 vehicles in 2025, which – based on Australia's new-vehicle market in 2024 – would also place it seventh overall for the full year.
'Our aspiration this year is 50,000-plus sales and sustainable top five by 2030,' said GWM Australia senior product specialist, Timothy Leong, at the launch of the new Haval H6 mid-size SUV in Melbourne earlier this week.
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Toyota has been the Australian auto market leader for 22 consecutive years. It sold a record 241,296 veicles in 2024, and is on track for a similar result this year with 120,978 sales to the end of June.
Behind it last year was Ford (with 100,170 sales), Mazda (95,987), Kia (81787) and Mitsubishi with 74,547 sales – a figure GWM would need to beat to place fifth, if the market remains the same size this year.
'What we say to you about being a top-five brand is really just to avoid, 'When will you be 100,000? Do you think you'd be top two?',' said GWM Australia chief operating officer John Kett.
'We keep talking about globally… we want to emerge as a top-three brand, right? So, we know top-five [in Australia] is 75 [thousand sales] and top-three you've got to be 90-plus [thousand sales]. So, it's easy to say 75 so we'll just say top five.'
Of course, other auto brands also have ambitious sales targets, especially the Chinese ones.
BYD became the first Chinese brand to crack the top five with a record of its own in June 2025, selling 8156 vehicles for the month and in the process overtaking Kia (7810) and snapping at the heels of Hyundai (8407).
GWM's 5465 sales in June saw it seventh for the month – with the GWM Haval Jolion it best-seller (2000 sold), but year-to-date it remains ahead of a charging BYD by only 1834 sales.
Under previous distributor EVDirect – which handed the local business over to BYD on July 1, 2025 – BYD made a bold public goal of beating Toyota to become Australia's best-selling brand by 2030 – meaning more than 200,000 annual sales.
Meantime, like GWM, also wants to be a top-three brand by 2030.
Mr Kett says GWM is also eyeing a top-three position, but isn't there yet.
'We'll talk about top-three when we can prove to you, ourselves, our dealers and our customers, that we're a top-five brand, and that's why we just keep talking about it.
'Therefore, getting from 50 to 55 to 60 [thousand] seems easy to some, if you look at the [sales growth] chart, to become a 100,000-unit brand, but we've got a long way to go to prove that.
'We've got a portfolio that we think can get us three quarters of the way there – 75 thousand. We feel like we've got a portfolio we can probably push a little bit further, but our brand and our processes and the investments required are those that the constraints we feel like we can control around.'
Great Wall rebranded as GWM in Australia in 2020, launching the Cannon Alpha dual-cab ute before the company merged its Haval SUV sub-brand for a combined 18,385 sales.
Growth since has seen 25,042 (+36.2 per cent) in 2022, with 36,397 (+45.3 per cent) in 2023 before last year's 17.5 per cent gain to 42,782.
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