Australians’ New-Car Interest Waning, Survey Shows

The Australian auto industry gets more potentially bad news in a survey that finds sales prospects at their lowest in a decade.

Roy Morgan Research says the results represent a sharp turnaround from a year ago, when the number of respondents expressing new-car-buying intentions in the short term peaked at 741,000, giving strong indications of record sales in 2014.

Now, at least 150,000 fewer Australians say they are in the market for a new car over the next 12 months.

The latest figures show 583,000 Australians intend to buy a new car in the coming year, the lowest number of intenders since September 2010 and, at 3%, the lowest proportion of the population since July 2002.

Longer-term, the prospects look better. The survey shows an estimated 2.3 million Australians intend to buy a new car within the next four years, a result on par with February 2013 and comfortably above the long-term average of 2.1 million.

Jordan Pakes, automotive group account director-Roy Morgan Research, says new-car sales have started softly in 2014, with both January and February results down compared with year-ago.

“The fall in new-car sales and the number of Australians intending to purchase over the next 12 months coincides with a steady decline in consumer confidence and a continued rise in unemployment,” Pakes says in a statement.

“Consumer confidence is down due largely to consumers’ rising concern over economic conditions in the year ahead. This short-term worry is possibly causing some buyers to delay their purchase by a year, with the number looking to get a new car between one and two years from now actually rising.”

But Pakes says one brand bucking the trend is Audi. The number of Australians considering the Volkswagen luxury marque in the next 12 months has risen 42% since February 2013.