A pair of high-performance SUVs, the Lamborghini Urus and Maserati Levante, were the stars of Australia’s top sports car showrooms in 2022.

The Urus helped lead Lamborghini to record sales of 176 cars last year, while the Levante ensured Maserati’s second-best result ever with 594 deliveries.

McLaren and Lotus, which don’t have an SUV in their portfolio, both declined and even Aston Martin – with the DBX SUV in showrooms – also took a hit.

With the Lamborghini record, the company increased its Australian sales by more than a third in 2022, with a 34.4 per cent improvement to 176 deliveries, easily beating the brand’s previous record of 134 cars set in 2018.

The Urus accounted for 90 Lamborghini vehicle deliveries in Australia last year, a 40.6 percent improvement over 2021.

The Australian result came as Lamborghini claimed a world record total of 9233 cars for 2022, a 10 per cent improvement on 2021.

“Australia … is one of the best performing markets in Asia Pacific,” said Automobili Lamborghini Asia Pacific Regional Director Francesco Scardaoni drive.

The Maserati result in Australia was an overall improvement of 6.1 per cent over 2021 from 560 to 590 cars, although the make record still stands at 642 cars set in 2018.

The Italian brand claims it is now poised for a new all-time high in 2023 when the smaller Maserati Grecale SUV arrives to expand the Australian offering.

“We are carrying our largest-ever backlog into 2023 and are only ordering the MC20 supercar for customers, not for stock,” said Grant Barling, general manager of Maserati Australia and New Zealand drive.

“We estimate that 55 percent of our market will be Grecale this year. It will arrive here in late February or early March.

“The interesting thing for us is that the Porsche Macan grew by 18 percent last year and we will be competing with Grecale there.

It was British sports car brands that suffered the most in 2022, as sales of Aston Martin fell 5.7 percent from 140 to 132 cars and Lotus fell 12.7 percent from 71 to 62 cars.

McLaren, which is now talking about adding an SUV to its range, saw sales fall 30.7 percent last year from 88 to 61 cars.