Weekly Dealer Car Enquiries: October 2, 2022

In this series, which we aim to bring to you every week, we’ll be detailing some of the key numbers and trends that we’re seeing in terms of dealer connections made through our site.

As this data is considered somewhat representative of broader industry activity, and serves as one of the more insightful leading indicators for potential car sales, we hope it will fulfil a few purposes for our broad audience. First, to document not just how we’re performing as a business, but how dealers and the wider market stand to perform, so you don’t have to wait til that next set of official sales data.

Without further ado, here’s what happened over the last week.

Total new car enquiries

We saw a modest uptick in dealer connections in the week ending Sunday, October 2, 2022, where there were a total of 1,560 price requests in relation to new cars. That was a 3.8% increase compared with the preceding week, when there were 1,503 new car enquiries recorded via the PriceMyCar platform.

The increase last week comes in the lead-up to the latest interest rate hike from the Reserve Bank of Australia, which represents the sixth consecutive month where the official cash rate has been increased. Lenders have been passing on these rates in lockstep, so the headwinds for buying a new car at this time should not be understated, especially with a myriad of supply issues still at hand. 

Last week also saw the ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence Index fall by 2.3 points to 85.5 points, with concerns attributed to a weak Aussie dollar, poor stock market showing throughout September, and the end of the fuel excise pause. Consumer Confidence is sitting 5.1 points below the 2022 weekly average of 90.6 points, which underscores the resilience of last week’s volume of quotes.

New car interest by brand

Last week’s rebound saw Kia claw back some of the gains it shed the week prior, albeit Ford still did enough to manage to hold onto top spot as the most sought after car brand in Australia at this time. 

Isuzu was the other brand making a charge higher, with overall queries regarding the brand once again back in triple digits thanks to the popularity of its dual product line-up.

Movements elsewhere were relatively modest, if anything, suggesting some sense of stability across the rest of the market, but we are slowly starting to see a few new names pop up across searches. This includes the likes of Cupra, BYD, Ineos, and Mahinda, albeit it would seem that it is still far too early for these brands to be gaining any real traction at this time before their profiles are more well known among every day new car buyers.

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