After a year of sales consistently trailing behind 2013 figures, can the market turn around in time for another record breaking result?

New car sales in Australia were up 2.5 percent compared to the same month in 2013 – an encouraging outcome that’s broken months of lagging results.

With the exception of Tasmania and Western Australia, new car sales were up across all Australian states. The Northern Territory and New South Wales posted the healthiest results (up 6.1 and 5.9 percent respectively), followed by the ACT, South Australia, Queensland and Victoria which all experienced growth.

As we’ve seen throughout the year SUVs remain a popular choice, with 30,027 examples finding their way into Aussie drive ways – up 14.6 percent on August.

This strong SUV performance, along with encouraging results from the light commercial market (up 2.9 percent on last month) helped Dealers move a total of 94,978 units in September.

This brings year-to-date figures up to 832,953.

Whilst this is still 16,991 less compared to figures from the same time last year, competitive end-of-year incentives from manufactures are expected to create plenty of interest in showrooms.

Judging by current trends, many shoppers will be looking for SUVs – since almost one in every three new cars sold in Australia is currently a high-rider.

Notable thriving SUV brands include Land Rover and Jeep, both of which posted impressive figures in September, whilst the Mazda CX-5 and Hyundai ix-35 medium SUV models both landed a ‘Top 10’ spot.

The title of Australia’s most popular car is still anyone’s game – with the Mazda3 and Toyota Corolla battling it out for top spot. The Corolla leads the Mazda by just 23 units.

Meanwhile, the Australian-made Holden Commodore has surprised many by consistently selling in stable numbers, with sales up 26.5 percent to the end of September. Despite this, Holden was pushed out of a top three spot by Toyota,

Mazda and Hyundai as the strongest selling brands in September.

Time will tell whether Ford’s upcoming Falcon will help revive interest in the large car, as well as the brand, which experienced a disappointing month with sales of 6227.

With only a couple of months left in the year, stay tuned for the final sales tally for 2014 in our next issue.