Yikes – New Car Sales down 22.2%
Official figures out today show that just 71,647 cars, trucks & light buses were delivered last month. That’s down 20,434 vehicles on the same month last year.
As mentioned in a previous post these deliveries probably reflect consumer sentiment in October, allowing an average of around a month between sale commitment and delivery.
Strong November
Despite all the doom and gloom in the automotive industry, we’ve just recorded a very strong month in terms of enquiry. In fact for the first time since 2003, last week we actually deliberately put the brakes on some of our online activities to ensure that service levels didn’t drop due to us being too busy with fresh enquiries.
Unfortunately sales have not quite kept pace with this flood of enquiries. Whilst they are up around 20% on this time last year, enquiries are really going gangbusters & have recorded an increase closer to 50%.
Good News for Australian Car Industry!
At last some good news to report for the Australian car industry!
Kevin Rudd announced today a $6 billion package to safeguard the car industry in Australia. Whilst significant assistance was expected following the Bracks review, the size of this ‘bailout’ has come as quite a surprise to many industry experts.
New Car Sales Crash!
Well figures released today confirm what most in the industry had been expecting. A big fall in new vehicle sales for October.
Precisely 79,105 new vehicles were delivered in October down 11.4% on the year below. Year to date, sales are down just 0.9% compared with this time in 2007. Of course we all know why the sudden drop – the global economic downturn is making Australians have second thoughts before making such a purchase.
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