Data Diary

Australian New Motor Vehicle Sales – Apr10

Posted on 26 May 2010

Just getting to the April 2010 new motor vehicle sales released by the ABS this week (see here for original).  I’ll admit that I was a little taken aback when Alan Kohler purred about April’s next-to-record jump in car sales – led by 4×4′s sold to Western Australian miners apparently.  For a similar view see this article from the International Business Times here).

What we have here is the ‘seasonal adjustment’ factor at work.  See under our methodology we had our jump in March (see here).  Using original flows as the source data, and seeking to smooth for seasonality by using a rolling 12 month period, we get the following:

So while total sales for the last 12 months fell just short of the magic million mark (993,671), and did indeed rise against the previous month (976,185), they rose at a slower pace.  Knew there was a reason why we used this measure.

Still let’s not quibble about timing.  The real question is ‘what can we expect from car sales going forward’?

It’s all a matter of perspective I guess.  From where I sit, we are still looking to find the ‘new’ sustainable growth rate for car sales – cause without the debt crutch, it sure as hell is going to struggle to replicate the previous decade.