Late yesterday, Roy Morgan released its car intentions data that shows a distinct tapering of buying intentions:
According to the latest Roy Morgan Leading Indicators Report for August 2012, an estimated 2,206,000 Australians (excluding fleet government & rental buyers) are intending to buy a new car in the next 4 years. This is down on the July result of 2,253,000 but remains well above the long-term average of 2,082,000. These results come from the Roy Morgan Single Source survey of over 50,000 interviews annually.
In the shorter term, an estimated 589,000 Australians intend to buy a new car in the next 12 months a decline of 37,000 vehicles since the July 2012 figure of 626,000 and has fallen below the long-term average of 616,000.
Needless to say, car sales have been a very strong dimension of the consumer behaviour over the past 18 months. This has weathered all comers in terms of the forces that have weighed on consumers more generally. One wonders if this signifies the weakening of that strength. Or perhaps a downgrade of expectations in the mining exposed sectors which have, in part, driven high SUV sales. It will be interesting to see if that category leads any decline if it comes.
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific's leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
