New vehicle sales in Australia started the year with a solid result thanks mostly to the growing local preference for sports utility vehicles (SUVs), a trade group said.
Official VFACTS data from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) showed that 76,783 passenger cars, SUVs and commercial vehicles were sold in January (up 4.3% year on year).
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“This is an encouraging January sales result and provides a good start to 2012,” chief executive Ian Chalmers said.
“It is mostly being driven by private (27.7% or 2,533 units more than Jan 2011) and business (32.3% or 2,233) buyers of SUVs and car rental companies updating their passenger car fleets (up 55.6% or 583). The number of private buyers for passenger cars declined by 8.4% (2,314) compared with this time last year,” he said.
Queensland continued the strong sales growth it displayed at the end of last year, with new vehicle sales in that state up by 18.3%.
Toyota was the best performing brand in January with a market share of 18.3% followed by Holden with 11.8% and Mazda with an 11% share.
