Record car sales in September

Australians bought 85,054 cars, SUVs and trucks last month, or more than 267 a day. That's 6,923 units, or 8.9 per cent, up on September 2009.

It also eclipses by almost 600 sales the five-year-old September record.  The year-to-date 2010 market of 780,720 vehicles is running ahead of the same period in 2009 by 14.5 per cent or 98,746 sales.

Toyota is - as ever - the market leader, followed by Holden and Mazda. Year-to-date Toyota leads Holden with a margin of 56,369 vehicle sales, or 7.2 market share points.

While the Commodore remains the best-selling model with 4038, the Mazda3 - whose volume, unlike Holden, contains no fleet business - is by far the car on which Australians prefer to spend their own money, with 3878 sales.

But it could not be a grimmer return for Commodore's traditional rival.  Even in a month when most of the top 10 brands increased volume, Ford's Falcon slumped to sixth and the Blue Oval brand ran fourth overall. To compound the pain, Holden's soon to be locally manufactured Cruze also outsold the Falcon by 2432 to 2265.

Ford's lack of sales competitive small and medium cars bit them, with the large car market on which it is over reliant falling by 729 units or more than 8 per cent. Nevertheless Ford remains third overall in year to date terms.

By contrast, the small, light, and medium segment all increased - light cars by almost 10 per cent - as did all SUV segments except the large class. Compact SUVs remain the year's success story, the segment soaring by almost 54 per cent or 3509 units in September.

Toyota continued in the top sales position in the September monthly market with 16,185 vehicle sales, ahead of Holden with 10,718 and Mazda third with 8,850.