Car regos boom

While the national fleet grew 12.2 per cent from 13 million in 2003 to 14.8 million this year at an annual rate of 2.9 per cent, Queensland's vehicle fleet grew 18.9 per cent from 2.5 to 3 million at a rate of 4.4 per cent.

Next highest were Western Australia, Northern Territory and Tasmania, up 16.5 per cent.

There are now 11,462,400 registered passenger vehicles in Australia, an increase of 10.6 per cent over five years at an annual rate of 2.5 per cent.

However, passenger vehicles recorded the slowest increase in registrations.

Motorcycles had the fastest rate of growth, rising 7.9 per cent a year.

In 2003, there were 377,271 registered motorcycles in Australia. This year there are 511,966, a 35.7 per cent rise.

Queensland recorded the biggest motorcycle growth at 49.9 per cent to leapfrog Victoria with the second highest registrations behind NSW.

These figures do not take into account sales of thousands of off-road motorcycles, which are never registered for road use.

Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries chief executive Andrew McKellar said; the continuing popularity of road bikes such as cruisers and scooters held the Australian motorcycle market on course to grow for the fifth consecutive year.

The FCAI is forecasting total motorcycle sales to top 130,000 by the end of the year compared with last year's record total of 119,210.

McKellar said the FCAI was also tipping the total market to hurdle the one million mark this year with motor vehicle sales to the end of October up almost 70,000 or 8.6 per cent on the same period last year.