Vfacts Decenmber 2010

[vztrt]

http://www.theage.com.au/business/ca...106-19h1s.html

Car sales steer towards new record
Toby Hagon
January 6, 2011 - 4:45PM

Australians will buy more new cars this year than any other, according to the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries which today released 2010 sales figures that show more than 1 million new vehicles were sold for only the third time.

In 2010 Australians bought 1,035,574 new cars, utes, four-wheel-drives, SUVs, trucks, vans and buses, representing a 10.5 per cent increase over 2009.

Despite an increased focus on the environment and fuel economy sales of four-wheel-drives and SUVs (off-road style wagons) surged 25 per cent, now accounting for almost one in four new-vehicle sales with a total of 232,285 sold.
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Small and light (city) cars also posted strong sales results, increasing 11.8 and 18.4 per cent respectively.

"This is an exceptional outcome and is indeed the second-highest result on record and only the third time that the market has exceeded one million units," said Andrew McKellar, chief executive of the FCAI, who pointed to the strong Australian dollar, competitive finance rates and better vehicles as the driver for the sales.

He also said private buyers had returned to the market following the cooling brought about by economic uncertainty during the global financial crisis.

"Consumers benefitted from the halving of the tariff on imported vehicles on 1 January 2010 ... new vehicle affordability in Australia is at record levels. Put simply, you are getting more car for less money."

The FCAI is predicting modest sales growth of between 1 and 2 per cent for new-vehicle sales in 2011 with an official forecast of 1,050,000 vehicles.

However that would still eclipse the 2007 sales record, albeit by just 18 vehicles.

"It is a cautious but optimistic outlook for new vehicle sales," said McKellar, who believes the market is a strong chance to break the record.

But it was once again a bad year for large cars - most of which are produced in Australia in the form of the Holden Commodore, Ford Falcon and Toyota Aurion - that have been in a decade long sales decline. Large cars dropped 3.1 per cent despite the buoyancy of the overall market.

However, there was still reason to celebrate for Holden with the Commodore continuing its dominance as the best-selling vehicle for the 15th straight year.

Australians bought 45,956 Commodores, inching out the Toyota Corolla (41,632), Toyota Hilux (39,896) and Mazda3 (39,003) for top-selling status.

Despite the closing of the gap between the Commodore and other vehicles - and between large cars and smaller ones - Devereux stipulated Holden's commitment to ensuring the quintessential large car remained a best-seller.

"Commodore really resonates with Australians drivers, as it offers outstanding quality and value for money," said Devereux. "It's our intention for Commodore to be the country's top-selling car for many years to come - we'll do this by continually improving the vehicle to ensure it remains relevant for Australian motorists."

Luxury car sales were also strong, with many brands experiencing big percentage growths.

Lamborghini sold another 19 cars in 2010 compared with 2009, representing a 73 per cent increase. Ferrari sales were up by 21 per cent, while Rolls-Royce increased by a monumental 178 per cent.

Even mainstream luxury brands such as Mercedes-Benz (up 17.5 per cent) and Audi (up 14.1 per cent) increased, although BMW dropped market share posting gains of 5.2 per cent.

Despite a string of embarrassing recalls Toyota was the best selling brand for the eight consecutive year, retailing 214,718 vehicles, more than 80,000 ahead of second-placed Holden (132,923).

Toyota Australia senior executive director sales and marketing David Buttner said internal monitoring "did see some diminution" of the five KPIs the brand regularly monitors due to the recalls that were largely confined to overseas markets.

"The brand has been quite resilient," said Buttner, who added "I wouldn't say it cost us sales but it may have made some people hesitate [about buying a Toyota]".

Toyota dominated in eight of the 17 vehicle categories, led by some price repositioning and model updates that brought more value.

"Thanks to the support of the buying public Toyota is number one in passenger cars," said Buttner, who says being number one is "extremely important".

"It sells the most number of sport utility vehicles [4WDs and SUVs]. For each of those part 32 years Toyota has sold more commercial vehicles that any of our rivals."

At one stage the market was on track for even stronger sales figures, with sales up 14.5 per cent in the first nine months of the year.

However, growth slowed in the fourth quarter and the December sales figures were down a modest 2.4 per cent on the back of a rush to take advantages of attractive government incentives that ended in December 2009.

December was the only month of 2010 where new car sales didn't exceed those for the corresponding month in 2009.

drive.com.au

[Dr Smith]

Just wondering if a fixed price (ie non-discounted) Falcon at a set 3% interest would be a better way of boosting sales and maintaining resale vs heavily discounted...seems to have helped Coralla big time.

[dannyhilton]

Originally Posted by Dr Smith

Just wondering if a fixed price (ie non-discounted) Falcon at a set 3% interest would be a better way of boosting sales and maintaining resale vs heavily discounted...seems to have helped Coralla big time.

Problem is that Toyota will continue to look after most of those new Yaris/Corolla/Hybrid owners on the 2.9% finance offer with a strong dealer network, decent staff, fixed priced servicing and their almost bullet proof reputation and reliability. Happy customers mean customers who'll buy again, and even better spread their experience.

If Ford on the other hand did this finance offer it'd be poorly marketed, the dealers would not offer the service, if the car falls apart the consumer will be left in the dark, and after telling everyone about their bad experience will buy elsewhere. Short gain means nothing if it's not sustainable.

Now maybe I'm just negative Nancy, and perhaps all this talk about bad Ford dealers is blown out of proportion as we're all Ford nuts, but there is no use running programs like this if you can't get the rest of the buying experience up to scratch.

The person who said it's easier to keep a client as apposed get them, or more so buy them, back is spot on. Ford have the cars, we all know that, but before running big promotions they need to smooth over the buying experience.

[tezxr8man]

Originally Posted by tapeworm

yeah, new cars are freakin huge. Couldn't help noticing that my EF parked next to a recent Corolla sedan at the shops was actually smaller in dimension. New cars in general are too big and heavy imho.

Spot on, My eb is belittled by the Fg and there is no need for a car that big, it is great but when a carolla or focus has as much space as my EB then maybe ford should look at shrinking down a little bit and change perceptions about them being big thirsty boats

[1TUFFUTE]

does anyone know how to get hold of the figures for the new GT and GS sedans and utes. Im not sure if they are included in the falcon numbers or not...i cant remember...but individual numbers would be very interesting to see at this early stage.

[prydey]

Originally Posted by tezxr8man

Spot on, My eb is belittled by the Fg and there is no need for a car that big, it is great but when a carolla or focus has as much space as my EB then maybe ford should look at shrinking down a little bit and change perceptions about them being big thirsty boats

i think what you meant to say was that you don't need a car that big. the commodore is a similar size which means there is still over 5000 people every month that do buy large sized cars.

i agree though that many people realise that they can get by with a smaller vehicle, and when you start looking at smaller vehicles the range and choices are huge.

[Resurrection]

With the economy going sour again, 2011 will not exceed the 1 million sales mark.

[mik]

Originally Posted by tezxr8man

Spot on, My eb is belittled by the Fg and there is no need for a car that big, it is great but when a carolla or focus has as much space as my EB then maybe ford should look at shrinking down a little bit and change perceptions about them being big thirsty boats

corola and focus are space efficient , but they are not all purpose cars as the comodore and falcon are, and if you can fit a family and luggage in either of those small/meduim cars the way you can in a falcadore or tow a boat, caravan, i`ll eat pumpkin(i hate pumpkin), not to mention the safety factor of biggness, if it was purely a case of no one wants big cars......they would`nt be buying gigantic 4wd`s and suv`s and dual cabs in spades.

[jpd80]

There are some November year to date totals in Technical Resources
by deducting them from the full year figures I come up with:

Falcon 1939
Commodore 3778
Corolla 4955
Mazda 3 3439
Cruze 2081
i30 1986
Lancer 1602
Getz 1577

[russellw]

Our first set of graphical data (for the month of December) has now been uploaded into the Tech Portal.

Cheers
Russ

[GTP-03]

no good selling massive amounts of cars if youre not making any money on them, people seem to forget that!

[MrZ]

Originally Posted by tapeworm

yeah, new cars are freakin huge. Couldn't help noticing that my EF parked next to a recent Corolla sedan at the shops was actually smaller in dimension. New cars in general are too big and heavy imho.

Mate you must be imagining things if you think the Corolla's bigger than the EF. Here are the dimensions:

L/W/H:

Corolla: 4545/1760/1470
EF:4906/1861/1453

HUGE difference in length, massive 10cm wider. Corolla is 1.7cm taller, but that's barely enough to notice.

[csv8]

New Lancer is same size as original 1984 Magna

[vztrt]

http://theage.drive.com.au/motor-new...106-19hjm.html

Near-record year for car sales Andrew Heasley
January 7, 2011

Electric cars made their debut on the Australian sales charts in 2010, in a year when the motor industry enjoyed its second-highest number of sales on record.

Last year 112 electric i-MiEVs hit the road, a tiny Mitsubishi city car that runs solely on electricity and plugs in to a 15-amp powerpoint to recharge.

While the i-MiEV is being evaluated only in select fleet trials for now, its importance to the future of city commuting should not be overlooked.

Advertisement: Story continues below It will be available for sale later this year, with other electric cars such as Nissan's Leaf hatchback due here next year. Importer Ateco is examining electric cars under development from China's Chery and Great Wall, too.

Following a 2009 result weakened by the global financial crisis, last year the new vehicles market grew by 10.5 per cent to 1,035,574 sales, second only to 2007's tally of 1.049 million.

''The result is very encouraging given all the challenges of the year - the prospect of higher interest rates, political uncertainty and the withdrawal of market stimulus [measures],'' said Andrew McKellar, chief executive of the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries.

Vehicles built in Korea and Thailand each outsold local cars (about 163,000 and 165,000 respectively, versus 146,000), while Japanese models accounted for almost 357,000 sales.

And in a sign of changing times, Chinese brand Great Wall outsold 30 other marques, including big names Jeep and Isuzu Ute.

Worryingly for local car makers, the market for large cars under $70,000 shrank 3.9 per cent to 93,603, nearly 4000 fewer than a year ago.

Despite this, the Holden Commodore was for the 15th year running the highest-selling car (45,956), mainly to fleets, while the Toyota Corolla small car tailgated into second spot with 41,632 sales. The company's HiLux tradesman's ute was third with 39,896 sold last year.

Despite a year marred by global recalls, Toyota trounced all others in the sales race, notching up 214,718 sales for the year, miles ahead of runner-up Holden with 132,923.

The most successful car categories were off-roaders, with 235,285 sold (sales of compact SUVs soared 36.6 per cent - the Subaru Forester the class leader with 14,644 sold) and small cars with 239,191 sold (five of the top-10 selling cars were small).

And the wealthy look to have recovered from the financial shocks a year earlier - Bentley sales increased 56 per cent to 58 sold, Ferrari sold 126 sports cars (up 21 per cent), Lamborghini rose 66 per cent to 45 cars and Rolls-Royce shifted 25 limousines, an increase of 177 per cent.

[vztrt]

Originally Posted by jpd80

There are some November year to date totals in Technical Resources
by deducting them from the full year figures I come up with:

Falcon 1939
Commodore 3778
Corolla 4955
Mazda 3 3439
Cruze 2081
i30 1986
Lancer 1602
Getz 1577

You would be on the money there

Top 10 sales by model:

1. Toyota Corolla – 4955
2. Holden Commodore – 3778
3. Toyota HiLux – 3527
4. Mazda3 – 3419
5. Toyota Camry – 3236
6. Holden Cruze – 2081
7. Hyundai i30 – 1986
8. Ford Falcon – 1939
9. Toyota Yaris – 1919
10. Nissan Navara – 1696

[jpd80]

Originally Posted by russellw

Our first set of graphical data (for the month of December) has now been uploaded into the Tech Portal.

Cheers
Russ

Thanks Russell,

Commodore 3778
Falcon 1939
Aurion 1,309

Commodore Ute 777
Falcon Ute 467
Ranger 4x2 365
Ranger 4x4 ???

Caprice 329

Yaris 1,919
Getz 1,577
Swift 1,110
Fiesta 1,020
Barina 979
Micra 688
Jazz 682

Corolla 4,955
Mazda 3 3,419
Cruze 2,081
Lancer 1,602
VW Golf 1,147
Imprezza 1,020
Focus 963

Camry 3236
Mazda 6 481
Liberty 439
Accord 382
Mondeo 375

Kluger 1,548
Prado 1,301
Territory 859
Captiva 744

[phillyc]

Originally Posted by jpd80

Thanks Russell,

Commodore 3778
Falcon 1939
Aurion 1,309

Commodore Ute 777
Falcon Ute 467
Ranger 4x2 365
Ranger 4x4 ???

Caprice 329

Yaris 1,919
Getz 1,577
Swift 1,110
Fiesta 1,020
Barina 979
Micra 688
Jazz 682

Corolla 4,955
Mazda 3 3,419
Cruze 2,081
Lancer 1,602
VW Golf 1,147
Imprezza 1,020
Focus 963

Camry 3236
Mazda 6 481
Liberty 439
Accord 382
Mondeo 375

Kluger 1,548
Prado 1,301
Territory 859
Captiva 744

Falcon. Terrible result for such a terrific vehicle. No wagons meant a drop of 300/mth. But it really is the lack of LiLPG which is hitting hard. Apparently it had been up to 25% of all sales. I'd imagine something similar ie lack of LiLPG with the ute. Because they are way off where they should be.

[MrZ]

Russell, I hate to be pedantic but you keep mispelling "Impreza" as "Imprezza". There's only one "z". (Perhaps this is payback for everyone who mispells your name with only one "s" or "l" ? )

[jpd80]

Originally Posted by phillyc

Falcon. Terrible result for such a terrific vehicle. No wagons meant a drop of 300/mth. But it really is the lack of LiLPG which is hitting hard. Apparently it had been up to 25% of all sales. I'd imagine something similar ie lack of LiLPG with the ute. Because they are way off where they should be.

Yes, lack of LPG is hurting Falcon big time...

Too late now but pity Ford didn't try the 3.2 I-6 in XT to match 3.0 SIDI Omega for more
government fleet sales couldn't hurt and the smaller engine would distance XT from G and XR variants.
Anyways, Ecoboost I-4 arrives later this year, pity diesel wasn't available in Falcon and Ute...

[Wretched]

Originally Posted by jpd80

Thanks Russell,

Commodore 3778
Falcon 1939
Aurion 1,309

Commodore Ute 777
Falcon Ute 467
Ranger 4x2 365
Ranger 4x4 ???

Caprice 329

Yaris 1,919
Getz 1,577
Swift 1,110
Fiesta 1,020
Barina 979
Micra 688
Jazz 682

Corolla 4,955
Mazda 3 3,419
Cruze 2,081
Lancer 1,602
VW Golf 1,147
Imprezza 1,020
Focus 963

Camry 3236
Mazda 6 481
Liberty 439
Accord 382
Mondeo 375

Kluger 1,548
Prado 1,301
Territory 859
Captiva 744

Falcon result is poor. FG2 will hopefully bring some much needed updates.

Fiesta is doing well, should do better hopefully.
Focus3 cannot come quick enough, Ford is losing too many sales in this segment.

Mondeo should be selling better. It is a good car, far better than the mediocre Camry.

Hopefully the new Territory can bring back some sales. The new one needs to be a good car.

[MrZ]

Originally Posted by Wretched

Falcon result is poor. FG2 will hopefully bring some much needed updates.

Fiesta is doing well, should do better hopefully.
Focus3 cannot come quick enough, Ford is losing too many sales in this segment.

Mondeo should be selling better. It is a good car, far better than the mediocre Camry.

Hopefully the new Territory can bring back some sales. The new one needs to be a good car.

Mondeo is not comparable to Camry as Camry is sedan only, and Mondeo is hatch/wagon only. Not many people want a mid-size hatch or wagon - it only appeals to a small proportion of buyers. The 2.3L petrol engine is also underpowered and I'm not sure the build quality / reliability is up to Japanese standards.

[jpd80]

Originally Posted by Davez621

Mondeo is not comparable to Camry as Camry is sedan only, and Mondeo is hatch/wagon only. Not many people want a mid-size hatch or wagon - it only appeals to a small proportion of buyers. The 2.3L petrol engine is also underpowered and I'm not sure the build quality / reliability is up to Japanese standards.

Oh boy, you've just opened a can of worms.

[dannyhilton]

The Falcon duo is doing ok considering fleets shy away in December, and no factory LPG setup is available, I guess the figures are to be expected. When do we get LPG back, the news room has gone quiet on it?

However the Fiesta had a bumper month. All this without the WT Zetec. Number four is fantastic. Mondeo did ok, just seems to be always a nose away from middle of the sales pack.

Taking into account that the two biggest movers and shakers in the market are the small car class (Focus) and the small SUV class (Escape) the new Focus and Kuga/Escape are needed to get Ford clear of Mazda and into five figures every month.

Originally Posted by jpd80

Oh boy, you've just opened a can of worms.

Hasn't he. I think it best to keep my mouth shut

[jpd80]

Head office is fully aware of what is going on, FoA needs to maintain
profitability by stringing out costs and in doing so, vehicles get delayed.

Sure it would have been a tall order to deliver the LP Gas and new Territory by
Q3 or Q4 last year but that would have forced the division into a loss for 2010.
Ford head office wants a great 2010 result from all regions and they will get it.

^^^^ The costs and accelerated engineering resources needed for both were
either not possible or unrealistic to the perceived returns from delivering earlier.

[MrZ]

Originally Posted by jpd80

Oh boy, you've just opened a can of worms.

No, he did...

[russellw]

The Supplementary Statistics are uploaded into the Tech portal now. I shall make a note to amend the spelling of the Subaru.

Cheers
Russ

[DanielXR8]

Originally Posted by GTP-03

no good selling massive amounts of cars if youre not making any money on them, people seem to forget that!

Just think of the enormous profit they will make when they get down to selling one Falcon a month!

That argument is getting tired. Ok so they have cost cut the whole Falcon supply chain and squeezed what money they can from each car. Whats next?

Thats right. They have to sell more cars. Like Holden does.

[GTP-03]

Ford didnt get a handout like GM did from the Obama administration, if they sell enough cars to make a profit and cover there overheads, who cares what the final number of cars sold is. The falcon was the best selling 6 cylinder sedan last month

[JG34JA]

I thought I'd throw this one in -

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.c...rticle/1367848

Ford are TOP in vehicle sales in Canada in 2010.

[Resurrection]

Originally Posted by jpd80

Yes, lack of LPG is hurting Falcon big time...

Too late now but pity Ford didn't try the 3.2 I-6 in XT to match 3.0 SIDI Omega for more
government fleet sales couldn't hurt and the smaller engine would distance XT from G and XR variants.
Anyways, Ecoboost I-4 arrives later this year, pity diesel wasn't available in Falcon and Ute...

+1.

It would have been a lot quicker and cheaper to introduce a 3.2 I6 than the 2.0 GTDI engine. They could have got about 145kW and 310 Nm from the 3.2 engine which mated to the ZF 6 speed auto would have performed well.

I hope the new LPG engine is released this year as planned (i.e no further delays)