2015 Shaping To Be Our Most Prolific Year Of Sales Yet.
The Australian new car market has continued its resurgence, recording the best March result of all time.
Only Western Australia and South Australia saw marginal dips in sales compared to March last year (down 2.9% and 0.4% respectively), while overall sales jumped an impressive 8%.
The year-to-date tally of 277,594 vehicles is also 1.6% higher than in March 2013, the previous record year for car sales in Australia.
The spike in sales has occurred at a timely juncture – prior to the last two months, the car market had flat lined or maintained a steady decline for the better part of a year.
Despite consumer confidence still in need of bolstering, industry experts now believe that 2015 could be our best year yet, mainly due to low finance rates allowing buyers to update to a brand new model with the same or lower monthly repayments.
‘When you match low prices with low interest rates, people have a great reason to buy a new car,’ said FCAI Chief Executive Tony Weber.
Utes, luxury cars and Corolla march on
Three of the top selling vehicles were Utes – the Toyota HiLux, Mitsubishi Triton and Ford Ranger – despite the former two vehicles both set to be superseded by new models by the year’s end.
In a further sign of our changing taste in cars, most luxury marques continued to shine, with Audi up 22.4%, BMW up 14.4%, Mercedes-Benz up 29.5% and Porsche up a huge 86.7% on this time last year.
Two of the smaller contenders, Toyota Corolla and the Mazda3, continued their heavyweight fight for top spot with the Corolla pipping its long-standing rival for the second month in a row.
Holden and Ford bucking the trend
Deliveries of locally made cars fell to a new low as the Ford Territory, Holden Commodore and Cruze continued to struggle.
However, not all is negative for home grown heroes with the Ford Falcon posting its first increase in sales since December 2013 (up 9.4%).
Overall, the podium for March sales saw Hyundai in third place with 8709 sales, Mazda in second with 10,217 sales and Toyota continuing its market dominance with a powerful 19,082 sales.