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NZTA data shows new car sales in April dipped by 15% percent compared to March.
New car sales totalled 4585 units, 807 units below the 5392 achieved in March.
But annual sales overall are better than last year’s recession - hit period. New car sales are 30% ahead so far this year.
Motorcycle sales were especially down.
With sales of only 581 bikes in April, it was the lowest market for some months; down 168 units or 22% on March and by an almost identical number and margin over April 2009.
Neither sector within this segment was spared, with the fall off in sales shared pretty well equally between scooters (under 60 cc) and larger (over 60cc) motorcycles.
The motorcycle market continued to be headed by Suzuki followed by Harley Davidson, Triumph, Honda and Yamaha.
MTA Marketing and Communications General Manager, Ian Stronach says April is always a lower month than March. “The combination of the Easter break and school holidays has undoubtedly contributed this time around, but looking at where things were a year ago, this is quite heartening.”
Toyota remained as market leader with sales of 757 units and a 16.5 % share, followed by Holden with 503 units ( 11%), just 14 units ahead of Ford with 489 units (10.6%) and Hyundai whose 405 units (8.8%) was just enough to head off Mazda in fifth place with sales of 402 units (8.7%).
Toyota continues to lead the new car market for the year to date followed by Holden, Ford, Mazda and Hyundai.
In another closely fought month, where small cars again lead the way, individual model leadership stayed with Toyota Corolla (275 units) which just edged out Suzuki Swift (268 units).
Holden Commodore (213 units) again proved the large car exception taking third spot ahead of Mazda6 (168 units) and Ford Mondeo (159).
Helped by a strengthening cross rate against the Japanese Yen, and an increased pool of vehicles eligible for importation, used import registrations of 7053 were off by 10 percent compared to March, but were up strongly (48 percent) over April 2009 levels. There has been steady growth in this market in recent months, and it is now 43 percent ahead of the same time last year.
Sales of new commercial vehicles continue to remain subdued with just 1103 units sold in April. That was 492 units or 31 percent lower than March, 8% below the same month last year.
4 Comments
Maybe you should change the title to “motorbike sales down”, apparently the sale of bikes (i.e. bicycles) continues to skyrocket.
And if we look at the types of cars being sold I’m betting SUVs are dominating. This will mean in a year or twos time when petrol is well over 2 dollars a litre, we’ll have people whining that taxes need to be dropped.
Are Corolla’s still doing well? They are cheap to run, or is there a cheaper car to run offering the same size and performance?
Is any one able to produce the stats for bike sales?
Would be useful addition to these stats and data and would help us immensely.
cheers
Barb