Toyota Fortuner safe in Australia despite New Zealand axing, for now

Toyota will continue to sell the Fortuner SUV in Australia – despite being recently axed in New Zealand, the car maker has confirmed.

The HiLux ute-based large SUV was discontinued across the ditch in August this year, but Toyota Australia says that it has no plans to lose it from the local line-up just yet.

However, when asked if it could be on the cards, a local executive could also not rule it out.

“There is no plan to discontinue [Fortuner] as we sit here today, but as time goes on we make decisions about what goes and what stays,” Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Sean Hanley, told Drive.

“It’s still part of our product line-up and there are no plans at all at this stage to discontinue it, but like any product, as we face the New Vehicle Efficiency Standards (NVES) we look at the balance of our portfolio… volume, demand structures all of those things – but our market is very different to New Zealand.”

The current Fortuner arrived in Australia in 2021 when the model was last updated, with just 2062 sold to the end of August 2024 compared to 15,711 examples of Ford’s rival Everest and 12,911 of Isuzu’s MU-X.

With the NVES due to come into effect in January next year, car makers face penalties for not meeting their strict emissions targets as of July 2025, and larger combustion-engined models such as Fortuner may be in line for the chop.

As well as being one of the few remaining Toyota models not to offer a hybrid powertrain, the Fortuner also competes with other members of the brand’s large SUV line-up for sales – which includes the Kluger, LandCruiser and LandCruiser Prado.

The Fortuner uses a 2.8-litre four-cylinder diesel engine shared with the HiLux – with which it also shares much of its body-on-frame platform.

Last month a company representative in New Zealand told local news outlet Stuff that the Fortuner had been axed to “focus to provide a range of electrified powertrains and lower our emissions with a balanced product portfolio”.

“We have now cleared out of all units and it’s not in our future production plans so has effectively been discontinued from our line-up,” they said.