Car Advice
Australian cars don’t sell? Bollocks
Opinion: Mike Costello by Mike Costello Senior Editor
It’s an oft-repeated line — Aussie cars just don’t sell any more, hence the need for the local brands to shut their local factories and become full importers, something each will have done by the end of 2017.
I’m well versed enough on the economic and market-specific headwinds that are said to necessitate the end of Australian car manufacturing. Labour costs, scale, segment fragmentation… the list goes on.
And even though our weakening dollar makes our currency flows less favourable to imports — ergo more conducive to the sale of domestic goods — the relaxation of trade imposts (free-trade deals and the like) still work their magic.
So, that’s out of the way. I’m not so naive that I don’t ‘get’ the economic reasons for Holden, Ford and Toyota closing their plants and becoming sales, marketing and engineering divisions here instead.
Indeed, Australians have bought almost as many German-made cars (59,744) as Australian-made* ones (61,359) this year.
What I don’t get, however — and what I rather resent — is the argument trotted out that Australians simply don’t buy locally made or developed product.
Look, it’s all relative. Market fragmentation means scale is such that locally-made cars are a shadow of what they were.
The days in the late ’90s and early 2000s – where we saw Holden Commodore monthly sales nudging 10,000 and Ford Falcon sales pushing 6000-7000 – are clearly over and won’t come again.
In fact, the market’s top-selling cars — usually the Toyota Corolla and Mazda 3 — are lucky to halve that total, such is the nature of fragmentation.
But the relative demand for some Aussie cars is far less diminished. Raw volumes of cars such as the Commodore and Toyota Camry are down, but they’re still among the market’s top-sellers.
I write this little story in the shadow of the release of August’s car sales figures, called VFACTS and compiled by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI).
What did they show? Off the back of very strong retail campaigns from Holden, the Commodore sedan and wagon was the third most popular vehicle in the country, with 2144 sales.
Add the Holden Ute to this (the Lion brand doesn’t call the Commodore Ute a Commodore anymore), and its 2616 sales for the month came within a whisker of knocking off the Mazda 3. Add the 151 Caprice monthly sales in, and the Holden locally-made family overtakes it.