Demand for new cars in Australia remains strong – despite chronic inventory shortages, economic uncertainty, high inflation and rising interest rates – show official sales figures released today.

However, many new motor vehicles reported as sold in January 2023 were ordered over the past year – and delivered en masse as large shipments arrived.

Data shows that 84,873 new motor vehicles were reported as sold last month – an 11.9 percent increase from the same month last year.

Outcome of new car sales in January 2023 was 0.6 percent above the five-year average (84,389) from 2015 to 2019 before the pandemic and 4.2 percent below the January record of 88,551 set in 2018.

The Ford Ranger ute topped the sales charts in January 2023 – before Toyota Hilux ute, a month after it scored its seventh straight win of the year.

The Tesla Model 3 took third place for the first time in history and was the nation’s most popular passenger car of the month with 2,927 deliveries.

Coming in a surprise fourth place is the Mazda CX-3 urban SUV, which was ranked best-selling SUV of the month – while the Toyota RAV4, which was Australia’s third best-selling new vehicle last year overall, slipped to sixth on the sales chart in January 2023 amid long waits and production delays.

Wait times for most new cars remain three to nine months, although some models — like the Toyota RAV4 Hybrid and Toyota Camry Hybrid — have delivery delays of up to two years.

The January 2023 new car sales result seems to show a lag between demand for new motor vehicles and declining consumer confidence in other sectors.

Sean Hanley, the sales and marketing chief of Toyota Australia – which accounts for one in five new cars sold – says demand for new cars has fallen since extreme highs during the pandemic, when Australians treated themselves to a new car instead of a holiday abroad . However, customer orders remain strong.

“We’re still seeing strong demand,” said Mr. Hanley. “It’s not as crazy as it was during the peak[of COVID]but demand has, what I would call it, normalized.

“You have to remember that pre-COVID demand was very strong. To say that demand has eased or returned to normal at these levels doesn’t mean the industry is about to go backwards.

“We still have strong order banks and people are still asking for new cars and placing orders for new cars even though they know there could be a wait of 18 months to two years in some cases.”

As previously reported, sales figures for the last year showed 1,081,429 New motor vehicles were reported as sold in 2022, up 3.0 percent from the previous year – but 9.0 percent down from the record 1,189,116 set in 2017 and 5.8 percent down from the five-year average before the pandemic.

The data below was provided by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) and compiled by Alex Misoyannis and Ben Zechariah.

Note: The FCAI has reshuffled some of their categories for the new year, increased price limits, added a new category (values ​​over $100,000) and moved some vehicles to other categories as their prices have increased (e.g. Volkswagen Golf and Subaru WRX, previously in the small car category under $40,000).