Corolla tops September sales

Industry sales figures released by VFACTS and the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) yesterday show Corolla took top spot last month.

Holden's two Adelaide-built cars filled the rest of the September passenger car sales podium and were only split by the Toyota HiLux in overall vehicle sales totals.

The Commodore's tally of 3712 was just 54 sales behind the Corolla, which surged back to the top of the list after months of supply problems caused by the natural disasters in Japan.

Toyota's sales and marketing senior executive director David 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 for only the fourth time.

"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."

The battle for top spot for year continues to be close, with the Commodore back in front of the Mazda3 by just 539 units - both cars have been refreshed in time for the closing stages of the 2011 sales battle but Holden's new LPG system won't arrive in time to make a difference.

The Toyota HiLux range sold 3191 last month, just ahead of the Holden Cruze tally of 3117 for September - the fourth consecutive month above the 3000-unit mark. The VFACTS sales figures showed 86,819 new vehicles were sold in September, up 2.1 per cent (or 1765 vehicles) over the corresponding month last year.

So far this year 752,128 new vehicles have been sold, narrowing the gap to just 3.7 per cent behind 2010 to the same point.

New FCAI chief executive Ian Chalmers said two consecutive months of strong growth signalled a recovery in sales, particularly from some Japanese manufacturers.

"Sales stimulus by means of competition in the marketplace saw the third quarter end strongly, and we are now looking toward continued growth through to the end of the year," he said.