April VFACTS: Winners and losers

While car-makers around the world have fallen on tough times with continued fallout from the COVID-19 coronavirus, there was a glass-half-full sentiment surrounding the sales situation in Australia last month.

Several senior industry figures have told carsales the reported 48.5 per cent decline during April did bear some silver linings, both in terms of a small sales uptick towards the end of the month and comparatively against other nations.

While the near-50 per cent monthly sales fall was the worst recorded since official reporting began in 1991, Australia’s sales performance was considerably better than most other countries, which posted sales slides of between 80 per cent and 98 per cent.

“Compared with the UK, Australia is in a really good position,” said one industry exec, citing Britain’s 97 per cent slump during April.

carsales’ own figures indicated April was month of two halves, with strong consumer interest returning to the auto marketplace post-Easter. In fact, traffic to carsales and carsales editorial in the second half of April was strong – the latter at record levels.

Below, we outline the winners and losers of the volatile April reporting period, which was made worse by the annual Easter and Anzac Day breaks.

The out-and-out winner of the sales race was Toyota, which reported its largest ever market share of 26.5 per cent while accounting for five of the top 10 vehicle sales.

Within that, Toyota reported sales of 2809 hybrid vehicles, an increase of 64 per cent on April 2019, spearheaded by the evergreen Toyota RAV4 Hybrid which continues to be subject to a circa six-month waiting time.

April also marked a watershed month for Kia, which overtook Korean sister company Hyundai for only the second time since sales reporting began. Kia finished third place in the ranking, beating many heavy hitters on its way.

In the luxury segment, BMW found its way into the top 10 marques for the first time, having endured a relatively 5.7 per cent sales slide year-on-year. BMW’s progress was underlined by continued demand for the new 3 Series along with its growing SUV portfolio.

Elsewhere, in-vogue pick-up marque RAM reasserted its market dominance by actually reporting a 14 per cent increase in year-on-year April figures. It somehow handed over keys to 178 examples of the RAM 1500 during that month, augmenting year-on-year growth of 27.2 per cent with almost 800 sales.

Chinese manufacturer MG also secured a modest 1.5 per cent uptick in sales (albeit from a low base of 408 vehicles), which helped improve its year-to-date standing of a 75 per cent increase in sales.

It seemed many businesses took the April reprieve as an opportunity to update their fleets, with popular commercial offerings including the Mercedes-Benz Vito, Peugeot Expert and Toyota HiAce all recording significant monthly increases.

Meanwhile, the super exotic market somehow held ground, with Ferrari consolidating its year-on-year growth (up 3.9 per cent on 2019), as did Porsche (up 0.6 per cent)

Of course, the figures aren’t completely brimming with optimism.

There were some very heavy losses sustained among manufacturers during April, many of them compounding an already-slow start to the calendar year.

Alfa Romeo sales plunged 79 per cent, with the sale of just 13 vehicles, Honda nosedived 60 per cent, Hyundai 65 per cent, Jeep 63 per cent, Land Rover 60 per cent, Mazda 60 per cent, Mitsubishi 63 per cent, Skoda 80 per cent and Volkswagen 62 per cent.

In the luxury segment, Audi (-63 per cent), Jaguar (-57 per cent) and Mercedes-Benz (54 per cent) each endured sharper declines than the market average.

Elsewhere on the sports car front, it was a slow month for Aston Martin and Lotus, each reporting the sale of a solitary car.

In percentages, the passenger car class was affected worst, losing 61.6 per cent of sales for a final figure of 9157 vehicles sold – 14,659 fewer than April 2019, when the industry sold 23,816.

But while the SUV share of the market dipped by a smaller percentage – 45.7 per cent – the actual sales numbers were worse than passenger cars, coming from a higher total in April last year.

SUV consumers purchased 33,190 vehicles 12 months ago, but just 18,023 last month. That’s a fall of 15,167 sales.

Things were slightly better in the light commercial vehicles class, with 9436 units sold last month, versus 15,601 in April 2019. That represents a shortfall of 6165 sales, or 39.5 per cent.