April VFACTS: New low for Holden Commodore

Holden’s Commodore has posted the lowest monthly sales figure in its illustrious 40-year history, with less than 600 registered in April.

Official VFACTS sales figures due to be released later this week are expected to show Holden sold just 587 Commodores last month – almost 60 per cent less than in April 2017.

But that number will reduce even further given it still includes a number of homegrown VFII Commodore sedans and wagons, although Holden sold just 26 locally made Utes and two Caprices last month.

Commodore sales have hovered at historical lows of less than 1000 for the past three months, with the previous low of 737 recorded in February – the same month Holden launched its imported ZB Commodore and posted its lowest overall monthly sales figure since 1948.

With the exception of Barina, Trax and Trailblazer, all other Holden models also posted slower sales in April, when Holden’s overall sales were down 21.2 per cent – more than any other top-10 brand.

Nevertheless Holden climbed from 10th on the sales chart and a paltry 4.9 per cent market share in March to sixth and 5.8 per cent in April, when the overall market slipped by more than two per cent (more than six per cent based on equivalent selling days) but remains up year-to-date.

That’s a far cry from the 21.6 per cent share the former market leader held as recently as 2002, but the Commodore wasn’t the only mid-size model to experience a sales slump in April.

At just over 560, sales of Toyota’s new imported Camry were also about 60 per cent down on the same month last year, while the Mazda6 was down almost 40 per cent at 180 (less than the Kia Stinger), Ford shifted 208 Mondeos (down more than 30%) and Honda sold just five Accords.

Once again the Toyota HiLux, with almost 3600 sales, was the top-selling vehicle in April, followed by the Toyota Corolla (2979), Ford Ranger (2796) and Mazda3 (2261).

But while Toyota sales lifted by 3.5 per cent to 16,647, Mazda’s slumped by 10.5 per cent to 7723 following sales declines by all models but the BT-50 4x4.

Less than 600 sales behind in third was Hyundai, which was up 4.1 per cent despite its volume-selling i30 falling 3.8 per cent to just over 1900 sales.

After its stellar rise to third overall in March, Mitsubishi remained solid in fourth with more than 5500 sales, the ASX topping the small SUV segment for the month and year, and the Eclipse Cross adding all-incremental sales.

After Holden, fifth-placed Ford was the biggest loser in April with a near-17% sales decline to 4822 sales, followed by Holden, Kia, Subaru, Volkswagen and Nissan – the only other top-10 brand to go backwards in April, by 9.6 per cent.