According to the latest Roy Morgan Leading Indicators Report for September 2011, an estimated 2,120,000 Australians are intending to buy a new car in the next 4 years. This is up on the August result of 2,059,000 and above the long-term average1 of 2,064,000.

In the shorter term an estimated 625,000 Australians intend to buy a new car in the next 12 months (excluding Fleet, Government and Rental Buyers). Although this is down marginally on the August 2011 figure of 640,000, it remains 14,000 above the short-term average2 of 611,000.

New Car Buying Intention


Source: Roy Morgan Single Source (Australia): April 2002 – September 2011, n=534,326 (average quarterly sample n = 13,693). ¹Long Term Average = Four year new car buying intention, April 2002 – September 2011.
²Short Term Average = One year new car buying intention, April 2002 – September 2011.

Norman Morris, Industry Communications Director, Roy Morgan Research, says:

“Since hitting a record high of more than 2.2 million in March this year, long-term new car buying intentions have declined for the past 5 months. It’s not surprising to see that Consumer Confidence has also declined over this same period and therefore great news for the Automotive Industry to see both metrics back up again in September.
“Of the mainstream brands, Honda has improved the most over the short term, with the Accord Euro driving much of the brands recent gains.
“Amongst the luxury brands, both Mercedes-Benz and BMW have improved over the recent term, with BMW posting their highest result for 2011. Conversely, after hitting their best result in August this year Audi has declined to 1.5% of total intentions.
“With many of the luxury marquee’s having new models destined for our showrooms over the next 12 months (including the Audi Q3 and BMW’s all new 3-Series) it will be very interesting to see if any of the luxury brands can take market dominance away from BMW over the coming 12-18 months.
“The complete Roy Morgan Automotive Leading Indicators Report delivers detailed coverage of the health of the Australian automotive market.”