VFacts Jan 2012 Falcon 950 sales!!!!!!!!!

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Local hero no longer top dog in the Holden showroom as Australian-made cars continue their sales slide.

For the first time in its 34-year history the Holden Commodore has been outsold by a car in its own stable.

Having last year lost its crown as Australia’s favourite car for the past 15 years to the Mazda3, the Commodore suffered a further ignominy in January by being outsold by its smaller Cruze sibling.

Preliminary figures show the overall sales leadership for the month went to the Mazda3, which roared into the early lead with more than 4000 sales, putting it comfortably ahead of the Toyota Corolla (3300 sales) which led the market for the last four months of last year. The Cruze was a distant third with 2400 sales, ahead of the Commodore (2200).


Meanwhile, the Ford Falcon recorded its weakest sales month in more than 50 years.

Ford sold an estimated 950 Falcons in January – the first time on record the nameplate has dipped into a three-digit tally.

Ford Australia spokeswoman Sinead Phipps said Falcon sales were dented by hail damage to cars waiting to be trucked from the Broadmeadows factory to dealers. my comment..really!!! I think thats a poor excuse.

“There was a significant number of Falcons and Territorys that couldn’t be shipped because of hail damage during a storm [at Broadmeadows] on Christmas Day,” Phipps told Drive.

Toyota was the biggest-selling brand in January with 14,000 sales, ahead of Holden (9000), which only narrowly beat Mazda (8500).

Korean car maker Hyundai has started the year ahead of Ford (6500 versus 5800 sales).

The preliminary figures come as Holden last night announced up to 200 job cuts and a restructure of its Adelaide production line, a little more than a week after Toyota Australia declared it would slash 350 jobs from its Melbourne factory workforce.

Managing director Mike Devereux said the jobs of Holden’s 2400 full-time factory workers were secure. However, about 100 casual jobs are in doubt and up to 100 fixed-term contracts may not be renewed.

The car maker is scaling back its capacity from 460 cars per day to 400 and cutting back to one shift instead of two on the general assembly line.

Holden said it will build the same number of cars as it built last year – approximately 90,000 – but would do so more efficiently.

“No permanent Holden employees are going to lose their jobs as a result of this. People on the afternoon shift are going to join their mates on the day shift,” Devereux told the Herald.

“Rather than have a slower line speed and two general assembly shifts we’re going to have a faster line speed with more people on one general assembly shift.”

Holden had grown its casual workforce in anticipation of reviving its export deals to North America and the Middle East. “[But] due to the high Australian dollar, the forecasted [export] growth that we were anticipating in our production for 2012 is not going to materialise,” he said.

Holden had known of the worker cutbacks for some time; late last year it told dealers it planned to wipe 5000 Commodores from its 2012 production forecast.
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