New Models

Car sales September 2012: winners and losers

A record month from the Mazda3 in September has ended the Toyota HiLux's five-month streak at the top of the Australian new vehicle sales charts.

Tim Beissmann

12:0004 October 2012

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Car sales September 2012: winners and losers

Official VFACTS sales data released today by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries confirms Mazda Australia's popular Japanese small car hit a new monthly high of 4276 units, eclipsing its previous record of 4234 set in August 2011.

The stellar month puts the Mazda3 in the box seat to retain its title as Australia’s top-selling vehicle for 2012 with just three months of the year to go.

Five consecutive months of gains saw the Toyota HiLux narrow the margin to just 573 units at the end of August, although the dominant month, in which the Mazda3 bettered the HiLux (3479 September sales) by 797 vehicles, has seen its lead blow out to 1370.

Unprecedented sales of the small car also helped Mazda to its best ever result in Australia, exceeding four figures for the first time with 10,093 sales. A strong month from the CX-5 (1809), Mazda2 (1801), BT-50 (1124) and the Mazda6 (645) helped push the brand well beyond Holden (8955) into second position overall, behind market leader Toyota (17,300).

Mazda sales are up 18.1 per cent after nine months of the year to 77,862, and the brand is now on the verge of cracking 100,000 sales for 2012.

September was also a particularly good month for the recently released Hyundai i30 (3144), which slotted into third position overall, 11 cars clear of the run-out Toyota Corolla (3133) and 1193 ahead of the locally manufactured Holden Cruze (1951), which continues to fight through a popularity slump.

The compact Holden was 37.4 per cent off the pace of the same month in 2011, and is now 11.3 per cent down on 2011 year-to-date in a small-car segment that is up 3.1 per cent.

Its production line partner, the Holden Commodore (2532), held its place in the top five narrowly ahead of the resurgent Mitsubishi Triton (2326), although sales of the country’s most popular large car were also 31.8 per cent down on September 2011 and are 27.4 per cent off last year’s pace year-to-date (23,226 versus 31,977).

The seventh-placed Toyota Camry (2267), ninth-placed Nissan Navara (1812) and the CX-5 (1809) rounded out the top 10 for the month.

The Ford Falcon is almost perfectly mirroring the decline of the Commodore – albeit starting at a lower base – with sales down 30.4 per cent for the month (1188) and down 27.7 per cent for the year (10,328 versus 14,291). Already guaranteed to endure its worst sales year in history, the Falcon now faces the seemingly impossible task of averaging 1557 sales over the remaining three months of the year to avoid missing the 15,000 sales mark for 2012.

Mitsubishi (5802) sold a whopping 1727 more vehicles than it did in August, with the Triton, Lancer (1315) and the ASX (780) leading the charge.

Volkswagen (4949) also enjoyed strong month on the back of solid Golf numbers (1713), while Kia pipped Honda for 10^th position overall (2744 versus 2472) thanks to positive Cerato (833), Rio (681) and Sportage (374) sales.

Sales across the industry surged to 94,627 in September, up 9.0 per cent compared with the same month in 2011. Year-to-date sales stand at 822,674, which is 9.4 per cent up on last year and puts the Australian automotive industry on track to smash the all-time record for full-year sales set in 2007.

Top 10 Best-selling Vehicles – September 2012