New car bargains finally coming back? Why buying a vehicle in Australia could be about to get cheaper and easier

Buying a new car in Australia could be about to get easier, with one the country's biggest auto brands reporting that vehicle arrivals in Australia are up around 30 per cent market wide, and even predicting that a return to a pre-Covid normal could be coming soon.

The pandemic wreaked havoc on Australian vehicle deliveries, which caused long waits for popular models –like the Nissan Patrol, Toyota LandCruiser, Toyota RAV4 Hybrid and many more – and meant the end of any kind of discounting, with customers expected to pay the full retail price (and, in some reported cases, significantly more again).

But Hyundai in Australia says that more cars are finally arriving, more vehicles are now being held in Australia as unsold stock, and that new-car discounting was making a comeback.

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"I think what we can see across the marketplace is that, based on the two big logistics importers, the supply side is up around 30 per cent, so that's 30 per cent more cars coming into the country this year than last year," says Hyundai Australia's chief operating officer, John Kett.

"And that's good news for the industry. We can see, in the albeit very small storage rates, that more cars are being stored in these compounds, and we can also see, by the little bit of end-of-financial-year discounting that goes beyond the instant tax write off, that there are some excess cars in the marketplace.

"Whether that's brands trying to take advantage of an opportunity that they see, or recover the share they've lost over the last couple of years, is for us to learn."

More cars on grass in Australia would eventually lead to more bargaining power for new-car shoppers (save another logistics disaster unfolding).

At Hyundai specifically, Kett says supply is up around 15 per cent, with solid deliveries of the Tucson and Santa Fe, and continued supply of Palisade.

The brand's cheapest vehicles – the Hyundai i30 and i30 Sedan – are beginning to increase, too, with Hyundai set to focus on "sub-$35k threshold".

"The i30 hatch and i30 sedan are starting to lift, and it's important to us that we focus on those vehicles in the sub-$35k threshold. We need to make sure we're getting significant penetration," Kett said.

"(Maybe) it's a return to normality? You've seen all the (new-car) offers out there. We look at them ourselves.  We take a pulse of all of our partners in the supply chain and see what's coming in, we take a pulse of what's maybe being stored – countered by the fact that it's hard to get a car through the wharf today, so you don't know if the wharf is a real reflection – but storage is up, and by looking at the incentives in the marketplace.

"Our feel in the industry is that supply is normalising, but it's normalising a little bit faster than ours."

Kett was speaking at the launch of the all-new Kona, which will be offered with petrol, hybrid and all-electric powertrains, with the latter due towards the end of the year.  The executive said supply of the Kona was expected to be solid.