Another million car sales in Oz

Commodore's crown as Australia's best-selling car has been taken by the Mazda3 small car, with 41,429 models sold this year versus 40,617 sales of the family sedan. Also threatening the Commodore is its stablemate Cruze, which accounted for 33,784 sales for Holden during 2011.

Holden spokesman John Elsworth said the Commodore was now up against several new contenders in the marketplace.

"No other car in Australian history has been number one for 15 years in a row, and it's an achievement which Holden is very proud of," he said. "During Commodore's 15-year reign as the number one car the local market has changed significantly with new brands and even completely new types of vehicles giving customers more options than ever before."

The Mazda3 small car topped its segment along with stablemate Mazda2 which led the light car class. Accumulating 88,333 sales for 2011, Mazda can also claim the title as Australia's number one import brand.

Mazda spokespersons said consistent sales across its range, including record numbers for CX-7 and a strong start for the new BT-50 had helped the company maintain its fourth position in local market share.

"To see Mazda3 top the sales charts is obviously very pleasing but what's of far more importance is that both Mazda3 and Mazda2 won pole position in their segments against their direct competitors. For this we are indebted to Australia's private customers who made Mazda their choice in 2011," said Mazda Australia's managing director Doug Dickson.

Other best-selling models for December included the Toyota HiLux with 36,214 sales; Toyota Corolla (36,087) and the aforementioned Holden Cruze small car. Toyota in fact had three models in the top-ten sellers list, including Camry.

Market leadership for the year went to Toyota with 18 per cent share, for 181,624 cars sold during 2011. Last year Toyota managed to sell over 214,000 cars and achieved 20.7 per cent share.

Toyota's executive vice president David Buttner said Toyota's sales result was less than last year's largely due to lack of supply caused by the impact of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.

"Those missing Toyota sales are due to vehicles that simply were not built due to the disruptions that occurred to production," said Buttner. "There is no doubt that, if those vehicles had arrived at Toyota dealerships, our sales in Australia would have topped 200,000."

In terms of segments, SUV sales ended slightly higher this year than last. In total, 244,136 SUV models were sold during 2011; just over 8800 more than in 2010. All segments except medium gained sales over 2010's tally. The compact SUV market continued to grow; up by almost 6 per cent.

The Luxury SUV segment made the most gain, at 22.4 per cent over last year. The introduction of the X1 and new X3 helped BMW to become Australia's best selling luxury brand, beating Benz by a few hundred sales.

David McCarthy, Senior Manager of Corporate Communications for Mercedes-Benz Australia, played down the brand's dethroning. "When you add up prestige passenger car sales, we're number one, Audi is now number two and BMW slips to third place. BMW beat us by about 300 units in total, but when you take out SUVs, we're number one.

"The thing that upsets me is that we missed out on AMG sales on the model changeover, C, E and CLS -- about 230 to 250 AMGs -- and as well we've been suffering a log jam getting cars through customs. So add up all these vehicle deliveries and we would have been Australia's number one prestige brand. There's also another 100 odd C-Class' that came in December. But second is second..."

Asked if 2012 would be another close race for the three dominant prestige brands, McCarthy was coy: "We start off the year without stock of M-Class and B-Class. It's going to be a tough year. Interest rates and the economy will play a big role. Our biggest issue is getting supply of C-Class. It's hugely popular around the world. There's a new entry this year, Infiniti, but we won't lose any sleep over that."

Nissan's offshoot Infiniti is expected to release four models to the local market by 2013. Nissan finished the year in sixth place overall, as in 2010, behind Hyundai and ahead of Mitsubishi in seventh.

This year Volkswagen took Honda's eighth position, reporting 44,740 sales and 17.7 per cent increase in national sales from last year (at 38,016). Japanese brand Honda is now in tenth place, with three per cent share, after a year spent tweaking current models and adjusting prices to no great effect, and the late launch of the CRZ.

Subaru finished in ninth place with 34,011: a significant drop from 2010's 40,025 tally. The Forester topped the compact SUV segment with 13,142 sales, however according to the brand, figures were down by 10.3 per cent "due entirely to supply chain issues" caused by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. However, managing director for Subaru Australia Nick Senior said: "We are now very optimistic about the future as we're about to launch our new XV sub-compact SUV, followed by new generation Impreza, then the BRZ sports car around mid-year. So despite the challenges of 2011, the New Year is looking bright."

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