Good news… and bad news.
OK let’s get the bad news out of the way.
Yet again it’s the official car sales figures – this time for February. New vehicle sales were down a whopping 22% in February. This equates to just under 20,000 less vehicles sold compared with the month of February 2008.
Mazda 3 the top selling car in January
The small car segment continues to make inroads into traditional large car territory as the Japanese built Mazda 3 knocks the Holden Commodore off the top spot for sales in the moth of January.
This not only reflects a general shift towards smaller and more fuel efficient cars but also demonstrates how when fleet buyers are taken out of the market (many businesses close for a time over the Xmas period), overall sales figures can move around quite significantly.
Car Dealers Saved – financing to be made available.
This afternoon, the government has just announced a rescue package for dealers who have ‘floor plan finance’ (ie they run off credit securitised by their vehicle stock) with GE and GMAC.
As everybody in the industry knows, when GE Money & GMAC announced a few weeks ago that they would be calling in all their debts, there has been a frantic struggle by dealers attempting to refinance before the debts were called in – expected to be Jan 2009.
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.
Level 2, 9 Help Street