We'll bounce back: Holden sales boss

Holden has had its worst start to a year in more than a decade, and fallen to its weakest market share on record.

Sales of Holden cars fell by 20 per cent compared to January last year as the new-car market remained stable overall. The weak result saw the maker's share of total vehicle sales slip to just 11.4 per cent. Ten years ago, Holden had twice as much of the Australian car market to itself; in January 2002 it accounted for 22.7 per cent of total new car sales.

After posting just 8400 sales in January 2011, you have to go back to January 2000 to find a figure below that (7600) – but even then that figure represented 16 per cent share of all new car sales for that month. Indeed, in all but two years in the past 10, Holden has sold between 10,000 and 13,000 vehicles in January.

The Carsales Network understands that some of Holden's figures weren't tallied after an internal inputting error and some sales data may have been delayed by complications following the Queensland floods. But Holden said the reason for the sales slide was more straightforward.

"January last year was an abnormally good month for us," Holden sales and marketing director John Elsworth told the Carsales Network.

"Back then we had a lot of carryover of sales from the investment allowance from the previous year, and we had brain-snapping results with the Barina when we were giving away a sunroof.

"We had 14 per cent market share in January last year and we never got anywhere near that market share again for the rest of the year."

Holden finished 2010 with a market share of 12.8 per cent – the same as 2009.

According to FCAI VFACTs registration statistics key Holden models Barina and Captiva were down 56 and 30 per cent respectively. Commodore sedan and wagon were off 18 per cent and the Ute lost almost a third of its sale volume compared to 2010.

Elsworth says Holden's sales figures will return to form in February and, overall, the first quarter will come in strong.

"We expect to be up 15 per cent up this month," he said. "We have a big carry-over order bank from cars we sold in January but are being built and delivered in February.

"In January we didn't sell any rental cars. In February we're selling a few rental cars. The fleet managers are back from their holidays in February and a significant part of our business is fleet."

Elsworth said switching to local production for Cruze will also help.

"We have good projections for Cruze. As the only locally produced small car we have strong interest from government departments and fleets, so that will open up new buyers to us."

*Source: Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries

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