Australian new car sales made a sluggish start to 2014 with total January retails of 82,285 some 3.7 per-cent or 3,145 short of 2013’s number. That’s a bit surprising given the plethora of special offers from local manufacturers and importers as they clear 2013-plated vehicles.
Toyota was number one in January, racking-up 13,646 sales for the month – 45 per-cent more than any other brand and six Toyota models topped their segments. “Toyota is well placed to record another year of more than 200,000 sales, which would result in a 12th consecutive year of market leadership,” revealed Toyota Australia boss Tony Cramb from head office in the Sutherland Shire.
Mazda, surely destined for a massive year on the back of the all-new Mazda3 (the best small car money can buy) was second-best with January sales of 9,411 ahead of Holden (8,871). In fact, Mazda3 was Australia’s best-selling small car, Mazda CX-5 was our favourite SUV and the diminutive Mazda2 topped the compact car sales chart.
Hyundai was number five, registering 7,152 new cars in January (up from 6,816 for the corresponding month in 2013) while fifth-placed Ford (6,804) and sixth-placed Nissan (4,253) were both down.
A new name in the ‘Top 10’ – Kia. The style-lead Korean posted January sales of 2,484 – just 567 vehicles shy of ninth-placed Subaru (3,051).
And records were broken: Audi delivered its best-ever sales month with 1,685 new Audis fining homes in Australia lat month while Fiat Chrysler Group posted its best January sales on record (974 units, 46 per-cent up on January last year).
But January often throws a curve-ball in new car sales and last month was no exception – people mover sales were up by more than one-third (33.2 per-cent), upper large cars were up by 18.7 per-cent and large car sales were up by 4.4 per-cent…but SUVs (except for small SUVs were actually down by 2.8 per-cent.
