While looking through the VFACTS data for the calendar year of 2023 from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, I was both alarmed but not suprised that no traditional passenger car was in the Top 10 of sales in Australia. This means that no hatchback, no sedan, no wagon, no coupe, and no convertible features in the top ten at all. This is a far cry from even 20 years ago when all of the top 10 was sedans, wagon and hatches.
This means that the SUVification of the motor industry is practically complete; aided and abetted by taxation policy as of those sales, a full 93% of them were with ABNs; which means that most new cars in Australia are written off for taxation purposes. This in my opinion is a massive massive rort; especially when you consider that we don't even have a car industry in Australia to speak of. The car industry in Australia is functionally a labour aid program; for South-East Asia.
As data is beautiful and with my hackles, heckles, feckles, and schmeckles well and truly up, I got curious and drilled down into the data set. What I found is surprising and perhaps shows my patriotic prejudice and nostalgia for a world that has been and gone; where we actually used to make stuff in this country. I think that the darkest day in Australia's automotive history was 10th December 2013, which was the day that Treasurer Joe Hockey yelled at the motor industry to go away forever and threatened to remove the subsidy, and by the end of the week Ford, Holden and Toyota all promised to do exactly that.
Now that we live in 2023, in this Brave New World where we don't pay Australians to make stuff but do give tax breaks so that people can buy foreign made things, I am sad that what made this country a little bit special is never ever coming back. Be that as it may, one of the points of data that I was particularly interested in interrogating, was the width of new vehicles being sold. I suspected that the SUVification of everything meant that we were getting wider and fatter "cars" but the data actually tells a different story.
I shan't bore you with details of sales figures but please note that they were essential in nailing down answers here. I will point out that I only looked at the Top 10 of sales; so there is very much room for error in my answers.
2023:
For the year 2023, the Top 4 vehicles sold in Australia were as follows; included is their width for the most common variant sold.
Ford Ranger T6 - 1850mm
Toyota HiLux AN130 - 1750mm
Isuzu D-Max RG - 1870mm
Toyota Rav4 XA70 - 1855mm
The average width of the Top 10 vehicles sold in Australia in 2023 was 1831mm, and the average weight of the Top 10 vehicles sold in Australia was 1834kg.
The fact that the Top 3 vehicles in Australia that were sold are all "utes" but with almost pretend tray beds, is testament to the fact that after Joe Hockey yelled at the motor industry to go away and the motor industry actually did go away, that the bogans who were cashed up, basically bought Grosspanzer Brodozers because they couldn't buy pretend Hoonmobiles any more. Also of note is that the average of a new car buyer, increased by about 16 years; which means to say that new cars are still being bought mostly by Baby Boomers and the older part of Gen-Z because literally everyone else have never been paid enough in wages and therefore can not and do not buy new cars to anywhere the same degree.
2003:
For the year 2023, the Top 4 vehicles sold in Australia were as follows; included is their width for the most common variant sold.
Ford Falcon BA - 1863mm
Holden Commodore VX - 1842mm
Toyota Camry XV30 - 1816mm
Holden Astra G - 1425mm
The average width of the Top 10 vehicles sold in Australia 2003 was 1789mm, and the average weight of the Top 10 vehicles sold in Australia was 1772kg.
In 2003 the average new car buyer was either a Baby Boomer or someone from Gen-X who wanted a family car. They both had been priced out of the market for a V8 for the most part but could still pretend and show their allegiance to their red and blue corners by buying a family six. Toyota came third as it worked out that there was an entire market for people who wanted an appliance and didn't particularly care about performance. Camrys have almost always been soulless vehicles which are traded out by people at the first major sign of trouble or even before then; which creates a sense of false reliability from people who then do minimal or no maintenance on them.
1983:
For the year 1983 the Top 4 vehicles sold in Australia were as follows; included is their width for the most common variant sold.
Ford Falcon XE - 1861mm
Holden Commodore VH - 1722mm
Holden Camira JB - 1668mm
Nissan Bluebird U11 - 1690mm
The average width of the Top 10 vehicles sold in Australia 1983 was 1769mm, and the average weight of the Top 10 vehicles sold in Australia was 1452kg.
What is perhaps the most stark change in data here is not that cars became wider, because in 40 years the average width of a vehicle only increased in width by 62mm (two and a half inches in the old money), but that they increased in weight by 382kg.
That increase in weight from 1983 to 2003 is almost entirely explained by the Commodore increasing in size because it was getting pasted by the Falcon in sales figures, and then from 2003 to 2023 because 'cars' devolved from unibody construction to truck on frame as the combination of falling wages and taxation benefits shifted the demographics of the market. The Camry which is really the only direct analogue here after the SUVification of everything was practically the same weight as the current Rav4. The Ford Falcon which only increased in width from 1983 to 2003 actually hides in plain sight a really strange truth that the 2016 Falcon sat atop a platform which underwent evolution of 56 years and didn't really change markedly at all.
Now all of this is good and proper but the reason for my curiousness is quite quite selfish. I live in a relatively quiet set of streets, which were laid put in the 1960s. Traffic has to dodge its way down relatively narrow streets which were built for 1960s cars and not the Brodozers of 2023. What I am suprised about is that when you are facing down one of these things in a wee little car, you are expected to move over because the big cosplay cowboy in the two-tonne thing coming the other way sure isn't going to.
A width of only 62mm in 40 years is less than the width of my palm. I genuinely did not expect this. What did change is that that thing coming down the street is on average a whole 382kg heavier and this has nothing to do with increases in safety requirements as passenger cars were already pretty good in 2003. What is different is that these Pretend Cowboy Trucks are 463mm taller; which is a whole foot and a half in imperial.
Things on the road today are not really wider and fatter but taller and denser. That might in fact be an object lesson and parable to explain the general public, who do not buy hatchbacks, sedans, wagons, coupes, and convertibles any more. I am alarmed but not surprised.
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