The lowest annual vehicle sales result in nine years has just been recorded by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI).
It reports 1,062,867 new vehicles were sold in 2019, a 7.8% decrease on 2018.
And 84,239 sales for the month of December 2019 were down 3.8% on December 2018 (87,528), the FCAI says in its VFACTS statistical service.
The 2019 figure is the lowest annual sales result reported in VFACTS since 2011.
“First and foremost, and on behalf of the entire automotive industry, the chamber would like to offer our condolences to those affected by the devastating bushfires that have ravaged Australia over the past weeks. Our thoughts and prayers are with them,” FCAI chief executive Tony Weber says.
“Regarding the actual new vehicle sales results; 2019 reflects a tough year for the Australian economy, with challenges including tightening of lending, movements in exchange rates, slow wages growth and, of course, the extreme environmental factors our country is experiencing.”
Weber notes 2019 seeing a further shift to SUV sales which now hold 45.5% of the total market, a 2.5 percentage point increase from 2018.
Continuing the full year comparison, light commercial vehicle share grew by 0.6 percentage points to claim 21.2% of the market, while passenger motor vehicles decreased by 3.1 percentage points to 29.7%.
While holding the largest share of market, sales of SUVs declined for full year 2019 by 2.4% compared to 2018, sales of passenger vehicles declined by 16.5% and sales of light commercial vehicles declined by 5.2%.
The Toyota Hilux is the top selling vehicle in 2019 across all categories, with 47,649 sales. The Ford Ranger follows with 40,960 sales, then the Toyota Corolla (30,468), the Hyundai i30 (28,378) and the Mitsubishi Triton (25,819).
Toyota led the market in 2019 with 19.4% market share, followed by Mazda (9.2%), Hyundai (8.1%), Mitsubishi (7.8%) and Ford (6.0%).
