Car boom takes a breather in golden West

A SCRUFFY miner in need of a wash and a shave walks into a Holden Special Vehicles dealership in Perth and asks how fast the green Maloo ute on the floor can go.

Assured it is quick, he says he will take it. No haggling, no phoning around for the best price he just hands over about $70,000. It’s a true story from a dealership that was the top seller of HSVs in the country when the resources boom triggered a car sales surge in Western Australia in the past few years.

More recently, things haven’t been so rosy out west, due to a cloud over resources exports during the global financial crisis.

Data from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries’ VFACTS service shows WA is on track for 99,206 car sales in 2009. That represents a 14.9 per cent drop on its 2008 performance and an 18.2 per cent decline from the state’s best-ever 121,275 in 2007.

WA sales are off across all segments. Passenger sales are down by 15.3 per cent, SUVs down 11 per cent, light commercial vehicles have dropped by 15.5 per cent and heavy commercial sales, reliant on all industries and, crucially, the mining sector, have plummeted 26.9 per cent.

Left: Mitsubishi Triton.

If WA new car sales do come in at about 99,000 for this year, it will be the first time the state has sold fewer than 100,000 vehicles in a year since 2004.

WA sales had been on the rise since 2001, when they stood at 68,790. The number rose to 72,949 in 2002, 83,113 in 2003, 90,533 in 2004, 100,595 in 2005, 110,874 in 2006 and 121,275 in 2007 before easing off to 116,652 in 2008 with the effects of the financial crisis starting to hit towards the end of the year.

Early signs of confidence, including rising share prices of the big miners, suggests the WA resources sector is rebounding. Vehicle sales should start to come back accordingly, but how long this will take is anyone’s guess.

WA is not the only state to suffer a decline this year.

Sales are down 10 per cent in Victoria, 7.5 per cent in New South Wales, 8.5 per cent in South Australia, 3.6 per cent in the ACT, 15.5 per cent in the Northern Territory and 11.9 per cent in Tasmania.

While WA has been a strong performer over the past decade, Queensland has been another star performer.

From 1998 to the end of 2008, Queensland’s new-car sales increased 31.94 per cent, while WA’s rose 31.37 per cent.

Sales in Victoria rose by 23.7 per cent in that time, South Australian sales moved up by 22.1 per cent, Northern Territory sales increased by 14.49 per cent and the ACT improved by 3.04 per cent.

The New South Wales market grew, but not by as much as the market, increasing just 6.16 per cent in the decade.

For the record, NSW remains the largest buyer of new cars, with 282,049 vehicles expected to be sold on that state this year.

Victoria is number two, with 239,694 sales. Queensland should account for about 195,110 vehicles by the end of December, ahead of WA on 99,206, while SA is on track to shift 58,805 cars.

Tasmania is expected to end the year with around 16,530 sales in front of the ACT, which should wrap up the year with about 14,945 sales, while the NT is likely to shift just 9005 cars.