Holden Commodore may lose top spot

... as small car rivals nip at its heels in the battle for overall sales leadership.

The Aussie-made fleet favourite has found itself locked in a life or death battle for most of this year with the darling of private-buyers, the Mazda3.

But auto industry sales figures set to be released tomorrow are expected to show that the Holden Commodore is now also fending off a late surge from the Toyota Corolla, as the Japanese giant ramps up promotion and stock levels return to normal following the tsunami earlier this year.

The Corolla is expected to take the number one spot ahead of the Commodore, with the newly facelifted Mazda3 relegated to third spot after having claimed victory in January, June and August.

Despite the challenges Holden is not about to surrender the prestigious number one spot easily and Commodores solid September performance is expected to kick it clear of the Mazda3 in the close-fought battle.

Holden insiders said the Commodore had put in another consistent performance last month to return to the number one spot in year-to-date terms with the Adelaide-built Cruze again performing strongly with sales in excess of 3000 units.

Toyota is still the clear overall market leader despite being down on last year's tally to the same point. Toyota's sales and marketing executive director David Buttner said the company was pleased with its recovery post-tsunami and earthquake.

"We're delighted with the pace of our recovery following the earthquake and tsunami, our share I believe is in excess of 20 per cent for September and we're looking forward to a big last quarter," he said.

Mr Buttner said the June-August market was down about 30,000 - 27,000 of that was Toyota - and he expected the market to top one million units.

"We're back to normal availability levels, Japan has been supportive of our efforts to pull back some of the losses, we want to finish the last quarter strongly to put us in a stronger position for 2012," he said. "I'm sure it will be a good last quarter for consumers," he said.

Mazda public relations manager Steve Maciver wouldn't elaborate on specific sales figures ahead of the official release but said the company was happy with its supply from Japan and its rate of sales.

"We are pretty happy with our September result off the back of record August, the key thing for us is to measure the months either side of our M-Day Sale, we're happy with our running rate and we're on track for the rest of the year," he said.

Among the segments being watched by industry pundits will be the medium-car segment, sales of which is now closing in on the once-dominant large car market. One of the key cars in the medium segment will be the new Camry, which has been slowed by industrial action at Toyota's Altona plant.

Mr Buttner said the industrial action had not greatly delayed Camry's changeover to the new model, expected in November.

"At this stage there's no further industrial action planned, there's a secret ballot and that result will be known next Monday. We haven't had to change many dates, we've only pushed wholesale out by one week, at this stage we're pretty well on track," he said.