Popularity of Bigger Cars A Sign of Growing Confidence

Popularity of Bigger Cars A Sign of Growing Consumer Confidence

Turners Quarter 3 Sales Update (July – Sept 2014)

December 2014: 2014 continues to be a year of heavy sales activity for used vehicles, with LTSA reporting a 13% year on year increase in sales for the September quarter. This is largely due to imports, with registrations of ex-overseas vehicles up 46% on the same time last year. Leading used vehicle retailer, Turners, has also reported a strong uplift in sales for the September 2014 quarter.

While Holden Commodore and Toyota Corolla continue to hold the number and two spots in the sales rankings, smaller cars such as the Suzuki Swift have fallen out of favour and off the Top Ten list of cars sold by Turners.

Rising in popularity are larger vehicles with a rating of 2 litres or more which made up just over 50% of total sales in Q3. Cars with a cc rating of 1.6 or less were at their lowest sales levels for the last two years.

The average sale prices achieved by Turners are also on the rise, with 2 to 3 litre car prices up 13% on 2013 Q3, and 8.6% on 2014 Q2. Three litre car prices are up almost 5% on Q3 last year, and 2.5% on last quarter.

“We often see an upswing in sales of larger cars as consumer confidence improves”, says Todd Hunter, CEO at Turners. “Higher prices for these larger vehicles is partly being driven by the increasingly amount of low mileage, NZ assembled ex-company cars available to buy now, right now courtesy of our large lease company vendors. However, for those looking for something smaller and more efficient, now is a good time to buy with under1.3 litre car prices down almost 12% on Q2.

“With over 770,000 used car transactions as at the end of Q3, we are still on track for our prediction of over LTSA 1 million transactions in 2014.”

Turners’ Retail (Buy Now) and Trade Me channels continue to grow quarter after quarter as Turners trials its new sales channel with prospective car buyers – online auctions directly on the Turners website.

“This has already successfully been utilised for damaged vehicle auctions and we look forward to bringing this new functionality to prospective car buyers shortly”, said Todd.

ENDS

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