February 2022 New Car Wait Times: Part 2

In the first part of our monthly analysis of new car wait times, we detailed the makes and models with the longest wait times, as well as the state of play across the broader market, with the average wait time rising six days to 124 days last month.

We will now shift our attention to wait times across the different states and territories around the country, as well as the makes and models with the shortest wait times right now. Without further ado, here are the rest of February’s observations.

Wait times across the country

Western Australia is the location facing the most challenges in terms of supply security, and that comes despite the state recently reopening its borders. As it stands, the average wait time for a new car in Western Australia is 144 days, well ahead of the next-placed locations in Victoria and Queensland, which both have an average wait time of 125 days.

Further down the list, the Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales are only marginally better at 124 days and 121 days respectively, indicating the true extent of the problem is spread out over a number of regions.

A new car buyer in South Australia faces an average wait time of 114 days, while the only two regions with a wait time of less than 100 days are Northern Territory, 89 days, and Tasmania, 71 days.

Makes and models with the shortest wait times

Despite sharp pricing driving strong demand for its vehicles, Chinese-owned M.G. is the brand with the shortest average wait time across the entire new car market. The company also just posted its best-ever sales month in Australia, selling nearly 4000 cars across February, and likely because it has been able to keep stock at hand. 

As other manufacturers struggle with component shortages and maintaining an efficient supply chain, M.G. has managed to control delays for the best part of the last year, with the average wait time up only modestly over that period.

It’s a similar story for other Chinese brands in Haval and LDV, where the average wait time is well below almost every other peer in the local car market. 

Meanwhile, Mazda has now posted two consecutive months where wait times have declined, falling from an average of 75 days in December, to 67 days in February. The Australian new car market is Mazda’s most-successful international market, which goes some way towards explaining why it is able to assign more stock for our shores to keep wait times down.

In a sign that underlines just why M.G. and Mazda are among the brands with the shortest wait times at the moment, we can see that popular models like the Mazda 2, CX-3 and CX-30, as well as the M.G. 3, all lead the field when it comes to availability.

Each of these models come with a wait time of less than two months, and for the most part, these models have also been a success story since the industry started facing delays, with wait times never really blowing out more than three months.

Mazda also has two of its other models, the CX-5 and CX-9, inside the list of the top eight models with the shortest wait time, punctuated by the ever-popular Ford Ranger, which has a 62 day delivery wait.

In terms of improving supplies, the biggest improvement from the most up-to-date data favours Skoda, where average wait times dropped by 36% from 206 days in December to 132 days in January. It’s worth pointing out that the December result was itself a major spike, and February’s data hasn’t filtered through, but the improvement is coming off a volatile spike.

Recently, there have also been decreases in the average wait time for brands like Audi, Mini, Jaguar, M.G. and Volvo. Each brand has seen delays drop by at least a double-digit percentage figure, albeit these improvements have come off what was effectively record delay times.

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