Toyota tops 200,000 in 2010

Top-selling brand heads for eighth consecutive year as Australian market leader

As the Australian car market heads for its first return since 2007 to annual sales of more than one million vehicles, Toyota is claiming it passed its own 200,000 sales benchmark by mid-December.

Starting the month with 193,778 sales in hand, the Japanese company increased its tally by the required amount to top 200,000 within a couple of weeks. Toyota's year-to-date figure at the end of November was up by more than 13,000 sales over 2009.
Senior executive director sales and marketing David Buttner said Toyota Australia is "the only company ever to sell 200,000 vehicles in a year."

2010 will be the seventh consecutive year that Toyota has sold more than 200,000 vehicles in Australia.

In second place, Holden logged 122,479 sales going into December (an improvement of more than 14,000 year to date sales compared with 2009), followed by Ford with 88,065 sales (virtually static compared with 2009) and Mazda with 77,788 sales, which was nearly 8000 better than comparable 2009 figures.

Australia's highest-ever sales figure of 1,049,982 new vehicles sold was achieved in 2007, followed by 1,012,064 in 2008. In 2009, the figure was 937,328. 2010 is expected to be the second biggest sales year ever.

Watch out for our full VFACTS report in the next few days.

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