Toyota poised for No1 for seventh year in a row
Figures expected to show it is Australia's favourite brand - despite sales slumpOfficial sales figures for 2009 -- due to be released midday Wednesday -- are expected to show that Toyota was Australia's most popular brand for the seventh year in a row.
The Carsales Network understands that Toyota managed to narrowly eclipse the 200,000 mark for 2009.
But while this is an impressive figure, the Japanese giant in fact took a big hit in a tough year. Figures are expected to show that Toyota's sales slumped by 18 per cent in a market that was down by about 9 per cent.
The most affected models were the Toyota Aurion V6 (down by almost 30 per cent), Toyota Yaris (down by about 25 per cent), Toyota Corolla (down by about 18 per cent), Prado (down by about 15 per cent), while Camry and HiLux were both down by about 12 per cent.
Nevertheless, Toyota still had by far the largest market share, estimated to be about 21 per cent.
And the Corolla and HiLux managed to score numerous monthly sales wins during the year -- momentarily knocking the Commodore off its perch -- but the annual figures will show that neither was able to overtake the Holden for the full year.
In 2008, the Corolla and the Commodore had a neck and neck race to the finish but in 2009 there was a gap of about 10,000 sales between the two.
The HiLux scored a monthly sales win for the fourth time in 2009; it is the only ute to lead the monthly sales charts in Australian automotive history.
Meanwhile, Hyundai is expected to be the biggest improver among the mainstream brands -- up by a whopping 40 per cent or more -- and is on track to post about 65,000 sales for the full year of 2009. Its previous best result was in 1998 -- in the Hyundai Excel era -- when 59,798 Hyundais were sold.
Of the luxury brands, Audi and Volkswagen are expected to post the largest growth (up by about 20 per cent) while Lexus is expected to post a drop of about 12 per cent. German brands BMW and Mercedes-Benz are expected to show modest sales declines of between 1 and 3 per cent, which could be regarded as a positive result given the market downturn.
Read the Carsales Network's full analysis after the embargo on midday Wednesday January 6.
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