Petrol prices cement market direction

With fuel prices continuing their climb, Australia's car buying public are voting with their wallets.

The latest VFACTS figures for February show that the significant shift towards small cars which begun in 2005 is continuing. According to the official sales figures small car sales now account for over 22 per cent of the entire Australian new vehicle market.

Of the 147,449 vehicles sold in the first two months of this year, 32,523 have been small cars. If you throw in the light car segment total of 18,156 ('light' cars are smaller than 'small' cars in the market categories) then over one third of new vehicles sold Down Under are small four-cylinder models.

This is not good news for the four local manufacturers which all make large cars locally. It's this segment that has slowly been losing its appeal to Joe Public over the past 12 months or more. This segment comprising the likes of V6 Camry, Commodore, Falcon and the Mitsubishi 380 now accounts for just 14.6 per cent of the market with a total of 21,592 large cars sold in January and February.

This continuing downturn in buyer interest in large cars is also reflected in the overall fortunes of the local makers with Holden, Ford and Mitsubishi all down in volume on the same period last year by 9.5, 12.0 and 12.1 per cent respectively.

With 8338 sales year to date, Holden's Commodore remains the best selling car in the country -- ahead of Toyota's Corolla with 6607 sales in January and February -- but this total is still 17.6 per cent less than the first two months of 2005. Falcon sales meantime are down 9.8 per cent.

Mitsubishi may have had its best month for 380 since launch selling 1011 cars but that is still only about half of the volume it initially expected to be selling by March this year. Such volumes begs the question whether the maker can continue with this locally produced model long term.

Of the local makers, market-leader Toyota was the only company to increase its volume and share over the same period last year. This was not on the back of Camry sales though -- these are down 23.6 per cent for the V6 and 18 per cent for the four-cylinder models.

The Japanese maker's big numbers -- 16,173 in February for 23.1 per cent of the market -- came courtesy of its segment leaders: the new Yaris (1757, pictured), Corolla (3395), new RAV4 (1459, also pictured), Hiace van (590), Hilux 4x2 (1442) and Hilux 4x4 (1434). All of these models command more than 20 per cent of their respective segments.

Overall, February sales were down 4.6 per cent on the record February 2005, with a total of 77,446 units. The only major sector to increase volume was light commercials.

Despite the downturn in large car sales, Holden and Ford are still running second and third behind Toyota in year to date sales terms but the big volume of imported vehicles (which now account for 78.6 per cent of the total market) sees Mazda, Honda and Nissan in fourth, fifth and sixth positions. Mitsubishi has dropped to seventh on the year to date sales ladder with Hyundai, Subaru and Kia making up the rest of the top ten.

For the first time in a long time, Aussies also seem to be less enthusiastic about buying SUVs with the compact, medium and large SUV segments all losing volume in both February and year to date figures. Only the luxury SUV market increased thanks to a big push on Land Rover Discovery and the success of the new Mercedes M-Class (see slide show above).

High prices for petrol are also having an impact on the sales of diesel and LPG vehicles. With a growing range of products, diesel passenger car sales totalled 1517 for the first two months compared with 703 in January and February 2005. Original equipment LPG sales have reached 1124 units year to date compared to 740 last year.