Meanwhile there were reasonable figures from the car industry in August sales numbers from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI).
Sales of small cars were up, sales of bigger cars were down.
Some local car makers will be disappointed because they are stuck in the big, fat six cylinder time warp such as Ford and GMH, with buyers continuing to shun their large cars.
Sales of large Australian made cars fell by around 20% last month, while the imported Toyota Corolla topped the most sold list, knocking off the Holden Commodore.
(The Toyota was the most sold vehicle in the US in August, thanks to the cash For Clunkers scheme which ended last week.)
The Chamber said the overall new car market was down 5% in August from the same month of 2008, an improvement on the first seven months of the year, when sales dropped by almost 15%.
Official VFACTS data released by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) shows that 73,287 passenger cars, SUVs and commercial vehicles were sold in August 2009.
Year-to-date 603,843 new vehicles have been sold, down 14.2% (100,151) compared to the same period last year.
Earlier in the year the fall was more than 22%.
In fact the fall of just 5% was one of only three months when the sales decline has been a single digit figure.
Sales of the Ford Falcon and Territory fell 10%, Toyota sold more Camry’s but buyers ignored its six-cylinder Aurion.
FCAI chief executive Andrew McKellar, said the sales result indicated the industry had weathered the worst of the economic downturn.
"What we would take out of these figures is that there are some signs that private buyers are perhaps starting to come back into showrooms. There is some degree of renewed confidence out there," he said in a statement on the Chamber’s website.
