Toyota maintained its market leadership in April but Australian new car sales were down by 5.2 per-cent or 4,407 vehicles on April 2014.
Most of the dip continued to be in passenger car sales which were down by 8.9 per-cent (3,817 vehicles) compared to the same month last year. SUV sales were up by 4.0 per-cent.
Toyota sold 14,930 vehicles last month to secure a market share of 18.5 per-cent – well ahead of second placed Holden with sales of 8,010 (9.9 per-cent) and third-placed Hyundai with sales of 7,626 (9.4 per-cent) .
Hyundai actually topped three market segments – the ix35 was our best-selling Small SUV, the i20 emerged as the winner in the Light Cars Under $25,000 segment and the iMax people mover regained number one position in the People Movers Under $60,000 segment.
Mazda was fourth in April with 7,000 sales (8.7 per-cent). Year-to-date Mazda is our third best-selling brand with a market share of 10.0 per-cent.
Predictably, the awesome all-new Subaru WRX and WRX STi models have been fast out of the block. Subaru sold 691 of them last month (including 141 STis), smashing the previous WRX record of 469 sales set in 1999.
But overall, Toyota continued to dominate with the Corolla Australia’s best-selling car again last month and RAV4 setting a new monthly record. Toyota has sold more than 63,000 cars this year while no other brand has bettered 36,000.
The Australian new car market should still beat 1.0 million sales this year with Toyota targeting more than 200,000 itself.
