April 2020 new car sales plunge
Perfect storm for Australian new car buyers as sales plunge to their lowest levels in 30 years. Meanwhile, car industry lobby group shitheads prepare a medieval assault on the Aussie taxpayer…
New car sales were so emphatically shit Down Under last month that not even Tony Weber, the Dr Frank ‘n’ Furter of the car industry’s grubby little anti-consumer lobby group, in Canberra, could continue to use the bullshit term ‘negative growth’ to describe the apocalyptic plunge.
I don’t mind lockdown, social distancing, I don’t even mind refraining from French-kissing complete strangers in the street, but I do rather hate it when a zombie apocalypse impacts one of the nation’s top producers of bullshit.
“A total of 38,926 sales were recorded for the month. This figure represents a fall of 48.5 per cent over the same period last year (75,550 sales), and the largest single decrease of any month since VFACTs figures were first recorded in 1991.”
-FCAIA press release
VW empire ate the big one in April.
Here in the somewhat scenic Australia, we did far better than many other countries, in the new-car flogging sweepstakes.
You’ve probably seen in the news falls of up to 100 per cent recorded elsewhere on earth, in relatively civilised countries. India was down 100 per cent, with zero sales, just behind Italy, down by 98 per cent.
We’re twice as good as those losers, clearly. Of course, it’s mainly because dealerships in those countries were closed by government mandate - a fact some (let’s call them) journalists (let’s call it) ‘overlooked’ in their once-over-lightly reports on this.
Winners and losers in just a sec, but first, I’d suggest: you know it’s really quite bad when lobby group arseholes start bandying terms about, such as ‘fall’ and ‘decrease’. To describe sales. I did rather like the good old days when crap sales were merely ongoing ‘negative growth’ and Cherbobyl was a ‘negative reactor vessel integrity event’. Good times.
I hate it when they lose that lobby group magic:
“Clearly, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a major influence on the April sales result, and reflects a downturn in the broader economy right across the country.”
You think? I wonder what gave him that impression? Tony Frankenfurter there. I see statements like this in official press releases and I go: Here’s a dude with his finger right on the pulse. 60 beats per minute.
Winners & Losers
There weren’t really any winners last month (much like 2019) - but there were ‘negative losers’, happily.
Toyota accounted for better than one in four cars sold - grabbing a massive 26.5 per cent market share. Perhaps seen as a safe haven in a crisis. ‘Only’ 32 per cent down in April.
Kia pulled off an epic overtaking move - of sorts - really just by falling less than everyone else in the peloton, thus overtaking arch-rival and big brother Hyundai for a podium finish in third spot, behind Toyota and Mazda, but ahead of everyone else. Who ever thought they’d see Kia in third overall?
Year-to-date there are very few carmakers posting actual growth: Genesis is up 8.8 per cent, off a low base. Haval (rhymes with gravel) is up 37 per cent, while Great Wall was up by triple figures - 105 per cent or 354 additional vehicles.
I never thought I’d be talking about 354 additional Great Walls on the road like it’s some kind of friggin’ positive.
Peugeot grew almost seven per cent, from fuck-all to fuck-all-and-a-bit. So that’s nice. For them. Doubtless they had a board meeting in a closet to celebrate.
Ram is up 27 per cent, which I guess proves how important it is for some buyers to continue to compensate for a sub-trouser dimensional deficiency, even during such unprecedented uncertainty. The negatively well hung have bought 169 more Ram pickups so far this year.
And Ferrari - the mighty Cavallino - the most aspirational shitbox ever - one of the few good stories flowing from Italy this year. Four per cent up - that’s three more rich Aussie wankers in Ferraris, so far in 2020. I hope that gives you as much relief as it does me.
Cobwebs and broomsticks
As uplifting as all this is: the fact is, all the mainstream brands are in extreme pain, and this is a ‘perfect storm’ opportunity for you - if you’ve got the funds and you need a new car.
Among the brands I routinely recommend, Mazda is down 34 per cent this year. And bear in mind, this is all off the back of two years of protracted ‘negative growth’. Hyundai: 29 per cent down. Subaru: 20 per cent. Mitsubishi: Almost 39 per cent.
Even Kia, which is floating upwards, like cream on a sea of shit sales, is seven per cent down overall, just like Toyota and BMW. All pretty resilient in that seven per cent freefall domain - but still under massive pressure, just like the multi-franchised dealers selling them. (Watch, as dealers get desperate, for hidden added fees and chargers >> )
In the ‘premium’ space, Lexus has fallen 14 per cent this year, roughly twice as hard as BMW, while the Three-pronged Suppository is down 16.8 per cent, vestigially ahead of four-ringed Volkswagen for compulsive masturbators, which was formerly known as ‘Audi’ - down 17.2.
Parent company, holding the balance of power for the Evil Empire, Volkswagen, was down 62 per cent in April. I am, of course, devastated, as you’d expect.
All up - this is a sensational opportunity for you to pitch a really low offer to a car dealer, and watch him squirm as you and your cash departs for the door if he doesn’t go for it. Everyone should do this once in their lives - it’s almost as uplifting as being in a hot tub full of Amber Heard, Jessica Alba and Sophia Vergara.
It’s also an outstanding opportunity for shameless industry beggars to bother the government with their grubby, self-serving, undignified trivialities:
“We know that our member brands are doing everything they can to assist both their dealerships and their valued customers during this difficult time. But more needs to be done.
We are calling on Federal and State Governments to consider the automotive industry, which employs over 65,000 people in Australia, when compiling their recovery plans.”
-Ol’ Fishnets Frankenfurter, FCAIA
Tony Frank ‘n’ Furter there. He never disappoints. “Hi. We’re the car industry. Give us some more taxpayer money.” That’s the ongoing, prevailing proposition, to which I would retort, respectfully, do fuck right off, dude - climb out of this hole on your own, like a bunch of grown-ups.
Taxpayer assistance: The car industry has had more than enough of that. And it always ends badly.
PRO TIP: You lobby group mongrels enthusiastically attempt to throw the entire aftermarket industry under the bus at every opportunity, which, I suspect, is a much bigger employer. And yet you seek ‘protected species’ status when times are tough. Seems unreasonable.
A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Car Industry
If you really want to see auto industry employment recover, perhaps you could just stop sticking it into the aftermarket industry and thus seem like somewhat less malicious scumbags in the process. Just a suggestion.
In the past week, professional lobby group arseholes representing slimy car dealers have petitioned the government for a ‘cash for clunkers’ scheme to get old cars off the roads, thus stimulating the demand for new cars.
That’s spearheaded by former cartoon superhero, Jimbo Slarty Bartfart. They’re calling it a ‘Fleet renewal scheme’ because everything needs a catchy name, and ‘clunkers’ implies only proper shitboxes are targeted for scrappage - whereas they’re happy to scrap everything - even good older cars, not unlike a pack of rabid dogs.
“Such a scheme would provide significant benefits to motorists in terms of safety and fuel consumption, with a wider societal benefit in the form of reduced vehicle emissions.”
Mr Slarty Bartfart there.
Really trowelling it on, in my view. This is, like, in TV, when the executive producer says: “I’ve got a real opportunity for you.” You know he’s selling you up the river, right?
Here’s the dude representing a bunch of greasy car dealers - shamelessly pushing the slimeball barrow all the way to Parliament House - expecting you to believe he’s somehow primarily motivated by society’s more altruistic virtues, such as safety, fuel economy and clean air.
This is one of the most fucked-up things about lobby group arseholes - pushing the vested-interest barrow, while contemporaneously suggesting how great their bullshit proposal is going to be for the likes of you and me. And the media just soaks this shit up without critical assessment.
What he’s talking about - what they’re both talking about - is taking taxpayer funds, which could be devoted to (I dunno) setting up proper pandemic management agencies or an effective and well-funded bushfire fighting force, or deploying effective countermeasures against climate change, and in the case of Mr Slarty Bartfart, hand-balling that money to a bunch of grubby car dealers instead.
In the case of Tony Frankenfurter from the FCAI - they just want to see the money go directly into the car industry’s back pocket. Equally reprehensibly.
As your next Prime Mincer, I therefore, in the spirit of Making Australia Less Shit, call on Tony Frankenfurter, Jimbo Slarty Bartfart and, perhaps, Horst von Sydow - he’s the FCAI’s Ming the Merciless, essentially - to remake the Bee Gee’s 1977 classic “Stayin’ Alive” as a rallying cry for your members and their ‘brink of death’ bullshit allegations. Let’s snap them out of it now.
Suck, squeeze, beg, blow
You dipshits do this crying poor/Bee Gees thing, right down to the wardrobe and the nut-crunching falsetto, and I might even revise my impression of you.
It may not be any more favourable, but it will be revised.
Meanwhile, back in reality, as someone who has been self employed for more than 20 years, through both a GFC and a zombie pandemic, and never once petitioned a government for assistance, I’m kinda happy to pay tax in exchange for healthcare and roads, law and order, clean water, having the garbage collected, whatever.
I say emphatically to you disgraceful lobby group dickheads:
Fuck right off. Leave the taxpayer alone. Embrace the suck, and climb out of this pit of shit on your own, like the big boys you are. Just like the rest of us have to.
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