Holden beats Toyota for second month in a row

Holden has beaten market leader Toyota for the second month in a row figures for June are expected to reveal.

Preliminary results show that Holden sold 12,800 vehicles in June compared to Toyota’s tally of 12,500 sales – a little more than half of what Toyota sold in June last year. June is historically Toyota’s biggest sales month of the year.

Holden also beat Toyota in May, for the first time in more than six years.

But Holden is again unlikely to be popping champagne corks as the carmaker knows Toyota is yet to make a full recovery from the interruption to production caused by the Japanese earthquakes in March.

Toyota still has a comfortable lead when sales for the first six months of the year are tallied. Furthermore, although Holden sales are up 15 per cent from May, its June 2011 result is down 8 per cent compared with June last year and down 9 per cent year-to-date.

Although Toyota’s June sales were down 42 per cent compared to the same month last year, the Japanese giant is expected to have a strong second half of the year buoyed by better vehicle availability and the arrival of two key models: a facelifted Hilux in October and a new Yaris hatch in November.

Most Toyota factories around the world have resumed normal operations and are running overtime to make up for lost sales. But many of the vehicles are either still on the water, in transit to retailers or yet to be delivered to customers as dealers struggle to clear the backlog of orders.

At the Melbourne opening of the Australian International Motor Show (AIMS) Toyota Australia’s executive director, sales and marketing, David Buttner, told motoring.com.au: “Normally for us June is our biggest month, we’d normally do between 21,000 and 23,000. But … on the back of supply [restrictions] out of Japan we did about 12,500.

“We were quite buoyed by that given the circumstances [but] we will build up progressively and start to have some really solid months towards the end of the year.”

The official June 2011 sales figures compiled by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) are expected to be released by the middle of this week.