Comments on: 2008 New Car Sales Record

By: Falcodore

Falcodore — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 01:00:21 +0000

Go auto website has all the info.

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 06:48:10 +0000

The thing is that every time another vehicle is sold, it’s another one coming into the country or simply being built and they don’t just disappear when nobody wants them anymore. It will get to the point where there are unwanted cars everywhere (as if there weren’t enough already) and what do you do with all of them? I agree that it’s not sustainable.

By: JEYKL & HYDE

JEYKL & HYDE — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 23:31:25 +0000

matty b,

have to agree with you re used car value’s.take a 05 vz commodore.wholesale average now is only about 9 grand.that makes ford 7-8 grand for same model.that is alot of car for the money,some with only 50-60ks on them.now if new cars do slow up,and things get tighter,these cars will be in big demand…

By: Mark Greenburg

Mark Greenburg — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 23:02:34 +0000

There are about 14.5 million registered vehicles in Australia, according to the 2007 motor vehicle census. The average vehicle age is 10 years. That’s a very high average (by first world standards), so there is alot of room for improvement. Like you said, there are still a heap of very old vehicles on the road that need replacing. I think you do have a point that such high sales are only sustainable for so long, however when you consider how low vehicle sales were throughout the 1980s and the first half of the 90s, we *need* to make up for those years by selling more now. The US had about 12 years in a row of extremely high vehicle sales (’94-’06), and are only just now starting to drop off. Here in Australia, we’ve only had such highs for the past 6 years, since around ’02-’03.

By: Don

Don — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:03:57 +0000

CA where can I read the full detail freom the Vfacts report?

By: Matty B

Matty B — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:58:50 +0000

Should have read 1 in 4, but we all know that’s not even a real number as we’re not taking into account government/business vehicles which a huge % would not even correlate with the population.

By: Matty B

Matty B — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:52:02 +0000

Cupid Stunt
“It’s not sustainable year on year at that level. I predict there will be about 3/4million cars sold this year and 600K 2010.”

Think about this, all it would take is 1 in 5 people to turn their cars over every 5 years, it’s most definately sustainable to sell around the 1,000,000 mark each year. The biggest problem is we’ll end up with a used car market like the US. 3/4/5 year old cars are worth nothing.

I think a near 50% drop off within two years is ridiculous.

By: Cupid Stunt

Cupid Stunt — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:33:08 +0000

Pretty obvious really Mark. Whats the total current vehicle count in Australian of regularly used vehicles. Given that most Australians hang onto their vehicles longer than say Europeans, then the sales will decline over the next 5 years say. You can only have so many cars on the road at a time with a given population. I see that a lot of Australians are replacing some pretty elderly cars given their increased wealth and cheapness of cars also they are using smaller cars (corolla) typically.

By: WVB

WVB — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:26:38 +0000

The cynic in me says the majority of those sales were ultimately to Australian financial institutions. I’d be surprised if those “sales” weren’t largely supporting australia’s ridiculously escalating credit crisis.
I’m Curious though, when was last time any sales people here on this blog sold a new car without some sort of finance?

By: Mark Greenburg

Mark Greenburg — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:24:01 +0000

Why do you say it’s not sustainable at that level Cupid? Even though a million sounds like alot, a large portion of that million includes heavy trucks, vans, work utes, rentals, and other ‘non-personal’ fleet sales. This means that nowhere near 2 in 20 Australians have a car under 2 years old.