Australian cars are set for a strong finish
The last two Australian-built cars, Holden’s Commodore and the Toyota Camry, are not going to go out with a whimper.
Toyota sold more Australian-built cars between January and August than it did for the same period last year – more than 2000 people chose to buy the Camry last month, making it the most popular of the locally-built sedans. Part of that is due to solid deals offered by the brand – you can get the entry-level Camry Altise for $26,990 drive-away with ultra-low finance that makes the mid-sized machine a model for value.
Though the Toyota HiLux ute has well and truly taken the once-default place of Holden’s Commodore at the top of the sales charts, support for the locally-built machine remains strong.
Aussie enthusiasts keen to snap up the final year of Commodore production bought more than 2500 examples of the Commodore sedan and ute in August, helping the model power along with home-grown appeal. Holden says demand for V8 versions is stronger than ever, with dealerships asking around $80,000 for the end-of-the-line SS-V Redline Motorsport Edition models.
With Holden set to build its last car on October 20, there’s little time left to get hold of a piece of history.
Mitsubishi knows how to sell cars
Mitsubishi, take a bow. Working with often-dated and ordinary metal, the brand has bucked the trend for declining sales in a flat market to increase its year-on-year deliveries by 7.2 per cent.
The ageing ASX remains on top of the baby SUV segment and the unremarkable Triton has plenty of support in the commercial vehicle class, largely because of how hard the brand is pushing competitive deals.
Honda is also doing well, up 12.1 per cent this year thanks to compelling new models in the CR-V compact SUV and the new Civic hatch.
Nissan, not so much
Nissan’s Australian arm was shocked by the departure of local boss Richard Emery in August, when its market share fell to 4.2 per cent. Global Renault Nissan Alliance boss Carlos Ghosn singled out Nissan for criticism on a visit to Australia this year, telling reporters “I have a hard time understanding why Nissan cannot hold more than 6 per cent market share in Australia”.
The brand’s sales are down 14 per cent for the year to date, despite the introduction of updated X-Trail and Pathfinder models that proved more popular last year.
Emery oversaw a decision to drop the unpopular Altima sedan and Pulsar small car to focus on SUVs and the Navara ute, a move that has not paid dividends in the sales race.
Mercedes is still the luxury sales benchmark
The three-pointed star is well and truly ahead of BMW’s spinning propeller and the four rings of Audi in 2017, helped by consistent demand for its C-Class sedan. Benz sales will reach new heights when its upcoming X-Class ute arrives in 2018, giving rivals little hope of leapfrogging its place on pole position.
Mercedes has increased its sales in 2017 while key rivals Audi and BMW are down by 11.5 per cent and 15.5 per cent, respectively.
Audi’s new Australian boss, Paul Sansom, says sales are not a priority for the brand.
But his team will expect stronger results from the all-new version of its best-selling Q5 in the fourth quarter of the year.
State of affairs
New car sales for 2017 are just ahead of the previous year, with the 788,968 total so far up by 4588 cars compared to 2016. Digging deeper, Victoria is leading growth in Australia, with a 4.0 per cent increase in sales this year that heads South Australia (1.3 per cent) and the Northern Territory (1.2 per cent) on the high achiever’s list. Western Australia is the dunce of the class, with deliveries dropping by 5.9 per cent for the year to date in a difficult economic climate. If sales in W.A. continue to decline at this rate, 2017 will be the first time in more than a decade that the state has bought less than 100,000 cars in a year.
Perth-based motorists are clearly feeling the pinch – sales of utes such as Toyota’s HiLux are up by 6.1 per cent in Australia as a whole, but down by 1.5 per cent in WA. The luxury SUV picture is more dramatic, with Australians collectively cooling by 3.9 per cent on premium SUVs that have plummeted by more than 15.1 per cent in the west.
(Affordable) SUVs remain strong
Large luxury SUVs such as BMW’s X5, and the full-sized Range Rover, have fallen out of vogue in 2017, hurt partly by a lack of new product.
But affordable medium-sized SUVs are up by almost 20 per cent in the year so far, led happily by Hyundai’s Tucson crossover in August.
Ford’s tricky time in Australia is evident in the compact Escape struggling somewhat in 10th place, well behind the likes of Toyota, Mitsubishi, Hyundai and Mazda that sell at least three times as many cars in its class.
Mustang is galloping home
But the blue oval has a great story to tell in its new Mustang, which is Australia’s most popular sports car by a significant margin. The pony car found nearly 750 homes in August, making it second only to the Ranger ute in popularity.
Ford says Australia has become the number one market for right-hand-drive models, and that more people bought a Mustang in the first eight months of 2017 than they did throughout all 12 months of 2016.
Top 10 cars – August 2017
1 Toyota HiLux 4287
2 Ford Ranger 3588
3 Toyota Corolla 2948
4 Hyundai Tucson 2206
5 Mazda3 2163
6 Hyundai i30 2143
7 Toyota Camry 2107
8 Commodore 2071
9 Mazda CX-5 2048
10 Mitsubishi Triton 1970
Top 10 Manufacturers – August 2017
1 Toyota 18511
2 Mazda 8511
3 Hyundai 7800
4 Holden 6984
5 Mitsubishi 6649
6 Ford 6645
7 Volkswagen 4730
8 Subaru 4579
9 Kia 4507
10 Nissan 4095
7 Comments
Steve 0 | 2017-09-05 06:52:57
Makes you wonder how Holden are going to go with no V8's!
rickdingo | 2017-09-05 07:08:18
Holden are powering on to oblivion. It's amazing how the press always put a positive spin on anything Holden does. I can't wait until they close up.
ekim | 2017-09-05 07:33:53
Mitsubishi are now what Hyundai use to be, in a word cheap, appealing to the budget conscious buyer they are at the bottom of the heap. Nissan product lineup is not much better but a lot more expensive and that justifies their poor performance. i think the turn of fortunes of both Mitsubishi and Hyundai illustrates two very different strategies of investment vs low budget and how to be successful, in their own way, in both.
rossm | 2017-09-05 12:48:03
dont blame Perth motorists for a decline in Hilux sales. Most go straight to a minesite. And I have heard anecdotally that Ford is making some inroads in the mining ute market.
DJM61 | 2017-09-05 21:15:58
Carlos is alone in having a hard time understanding why Nissan cannot hold more than 6 per cent market share in Australia. They need better newer cars.
Mr Majestyk | 2017-09-06 00:06:16
Nissan's merger with Renault has been an utter disaster. This is when their cars became hideous and undesirable and nothing will ever change an Carlos is the problem. You can only imagine how bad it ill get for Opel when PSA take control.
Driver777 | 2017-09-06 04:13:53
Impressive to see that if you remove the Top 3 Toyota models (Hilux, Corolla and Camry), the remaining sales are still more than Mazda's total in second place. We're going to see more and more mergers and shared designs as the demand for new technology drives costs up forcing manufacturers to share resources.