Sales of Japanese cars in Australia hit a low point
The market share of cars sourced from Japan is on track to be the lowest in decades this year, driven by Toyota’s supply shortages and correlating with rapid growth in imports from China.
In the last 19 years the average yearly market share of Japanese-made cars in Australia has been 32.7 per cent, with the lowest figure since our records began being 27.6 per cent in 2016, and the greatest being 38.3 per cent in 2005.
So far in 2023 though, Japan-made cars account for 27.3 per cent of all sales, with 124,535 units out of a market-wide 456,833 sourced from the Land of the Rising Sun.
While this means the country is still Australia’s biggest source of vehicle imports ahead of Thailand, the market share figure is at its lowest since at least 2005 – which is as far back as our database goes.
To put this market share information into some perspective, consider Australians took delivery of nearly 22,000 (21,896) more Japan-made cars in the first five months of 2022 than they did over the same period of time in 2023.
In other words, a few percentage points of market share equals tens of thousands of cars, as
