According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, new vehicle sales fell by 2.7% in February – the first fall in three months.
VFACTS figures show that SUVs totalled 35,497 sales during February to record a 39.9% share of total industry sales.
Passenger cars totalled 34,740 for a 39% share.
Meanwhile, light commercial vehicles (LCVs) were the third largest segment with an 18.5% share.
The February 2017 market of 89,025 new vehicle sales is a decrease of 7418 vehicle sales or -7.7% on February 2016 (96,443).
However, February 2017 had the one less selling day than February 2016, which resulted in a decrease of 148 vehicle sales per day.
Sales of sports cars and micro cars rose in February compared with the same month last year, but all other passenger car segments declined.
Two SUV segments rose in volume during February. These were upper large SUVs (up 19.6%) and medium-sized SUVs (+1.1%). Sales of small SUVs fell by 11% and large SUVs by 5.7%.
In rolling annual terms, 1,171,252 new vehicles were sold over the year to February.
Sales of SUVs (440,709) eased from record highs in annual terms, while sales of passenger vehicles fell to a 22-year low of 481,145 in the year to February.
Annual sales of “other” vehicles stood at 249,398, just shy of record highs.
Across states and territories in February sales were down in New South Wales (-1.8%); Victoria (down 7.7%); South Australia (down 3.3%); Western Australia (down 0.2%); ACT (down 1.1%) and marginally up in Queensland (+1.9%) and Northern Territory (+2.3%)
