Strong market defies oil prices ... for now

The new car market continues to soar - with August yet another record sales month - but next month's figures could well be crunch time in terms of a forecast record year.

According to official figures from industry statistician VFACTS, the 663,445 car and truck sales to the end of August means the market is up 5.3 per cent over the same period last year.

Yet market leader Toyota's sales to the end of August were down on last year. Of the top 10 manufacturers, Toyota and Nissan were the only brands which dropped year-to-date volume. Nissan's strongest performers were its prestige market Maxima and narrow compact SUV segment leader X-Trail.

Biggest losers in terms of year-to-date sales were, perhaps not surprisingly, the large car segment - down a substantial 11,825 sales (10 per cent) over the same period last year - and the large SUV (sports utility vehicles) segment, down a whopping 17.3 per cent.

Other market segments under the blowtorch were luxury cars (down 3.7 per cent) and luxury SUVs (down 1.3 per cent).

Biggest year-to-date winner was medium SUVs - up 10,338 sales, or an incredible 27.3 percent, with the standout performer being Ford's Territory, which romped to 33.2 per cent year-to-date ownership of the segment.

Perhaps not surprisingly, next biggest mover was the small car segment, up 22,949 sales, or 19.5 per cent.

Other big climbers were medium cars - up 9.9 per cent - and prestige cars (12.3 perc ent). Sports car sales also did well - up 5.9 per cent - while people-movers and compact SUVs climbed marginally (1.9 and 1.1 per cent respectively).

All up, the SUV market has climbed 6.9 per cent over the same period last year.

Toyota still led the market overall, even though both its volume (132,311) and market share (19.9 per cent) were both down on its year-to-date results for the same period last year (133,287 and 21.2 percent respectively).

The result for Toyota reflects a big August for the brand after early-year supply problems meant it couldn't get enough Corollas out of Japan to meet demand. In fact, since adequate supply was restored booming Corolla and Echo sales helped Toyota to its best-ever August.

Holden finished August a distant second overall - almost 13,000 units behind Toyota - ahead of Ford, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Honda, Hyundai, Subaru and Kia.

While pleased with Toyota's market domination, the car-maker's national marketing manager Matthew Callachor acknowledged that SUV sales were disappointing and that rising oil prices were partly to blame. He told The Age newspaper's Car Industry Reporter, Ian Porter he was confident sales would bounce back.

"When I look at previous oil shocks, this (drop in sales) is a familiar trend and then it recovers quite strongly as oil levels out," he told the 'paper.

Here's hoping.

Top 3 sellers by market segment (year-to-date)

Light cars

Small cars

Medium cars

Large cars

People-movers

Sports cars

Prestige cars

Luxury cars

Compact SUVs

Medium SUVs

Luxury SUVs