Vfacts July 2011

[Road_Warrior]

Originally Posted by Davez621

When did Ford Australia switch from ladder to unibody ? Was it the 70s?

The Falcon has always been unibody.

[MrZ]

Originally Posted by Road_Warrior

The Falcon has always been unibody.

Really? Even back in 1960? I thought all cars were ladder frame back then. Surely the Holden would have been, as it was made back in the 40s? And the Valiant?

[Ford_The_Win]

Originally Posted by Davez621

Really? Even back in 1960? I thought all cars were ladder frame back then. Surely the Holden would have been, as it was made back in the 40s? And the Valiant?

I'm pretty sure Falcon has always been unibody too, right from the get-go, whereas Kingswoods were the last ladder-frame Holdens? Not sure on that one.

[new2ford]

Monocoque construction in cars has been around since the 1920s and certainly from the 1940s for cars in Australia like the Morris Minor and Holden. By the 1960s the Falcon (US origin) must have been, although with Ford's "agricultural" reputation anything's possible! The original Australian Falcon had ball joint problems though, so Ford's learning curve on that extends nearly 50 years through to the Territory!

[EgoFG]

Great Wall outsold Volvo ... does that help us figure out at what price we consider $ more important than safety ?

[new2ford]

Originally Posted by EgoFG

Great Wall outsold Volvo ... does that help us figure out at what price we consider $ more important than safety ?

But is that mostly the tradies' vehicles (where cheapness rather than safety has a higher value)? There is only one passenger vehicle in the range, how does that sell? (And are they Barina owners changing over? )

[jpd80]

Originally Posted by new2ford

Monocoque construction in cars has been around since the 1920s and certainly from the 1940s for cars in Australia like the Morris Minor and Holden. By the 1960s the Falcon (US origin) must have been, although with Ford's "agricultural" reputation anything's possible! The original Australian Falcon had ball joint problems though, so Ford's learning curve on that extends nearly 50 years through to the Territory!

Monocoque is incorrect terminology, that is like a frame/skin on an airplane or open wheel race car.

The more correct term is unitary construction, the frame is still there like a body on frame but made lighter and integrally with body panels.

[XR Martin]

All Falcons (and Mustangs as they were related) have had Unibody.
Even the first Holden was Unibody, however the later HQ/HJ/HX/HZ/WB 1 tonner utes had a chassis.

[jpd80]

Originally Posted by XR6 Martin

All Falcons (and Mustangs as they were related) have had Unibody.
Even the first Holden was Unibody, however the later HQ/HJ/HX/HZ/WB 1 tonner utes had a chassis.

Later Falcon utes are considered mixed construction,
they have a unitary front frame and half chassis at the back.

[MrZ]

Any idea why Ford and Holden decided to go with unibody from the start? Wouldn't it have been seen as unusual for a car back in the late 40s? But more importantly, isn't ladder frame much cheaper to make? Why would they go for the more expensive option? Ladder frame would also make more sense for Australia's rugged road conditions, especially back in those days?

[JG34JA]

HQ-WB (LC-LJ too) had a partial front chassis, and unibody rear. The idea was to bolt new subframes/bodies as engineering changed. Then they went and threw the whole lot out for the VB Commodore, such a waste of investment...

On topic: Great month for Territory! After driving one, I can see the attraction of the new diesel. It's quieter than our inline 6 Territory as well, that was a bit of a shock!

[jpd80]

Originally Posted by Davez621

Any idea why Ford and Holden decided to go with unibody from the start? Wouldn't it have been seen as unusual for a car back in the late 40s? But more importantly, isn't ladder frame much cheaper to make? Why would they go for the more expensive option? Ladder frame would also make more sense for Australia's rugged road conditions, especially back in those days?

Body on frame cars are more expensive to make and require more labor to build.
BOF cars don't have a ladder frame, they use a perimeter frame that supports the lower sills of the body.
Unitbody was state of art in the 1950's, reduced costs made cars more affordable.

[Joe5619]

http://www.carpoint.com.au/news/2011...-tsunami-26005

I havn't seen this one around.. Seems Fiesta has had supply problems becuase of the Japan Tsunami.. Not becuase of parts, but becuase of less ships!!

[new2ford]

Originally Posted by jpd80

Monocoque is incorrect terminology, that is like a frame/skin on an airplane or open wheel race car.

The more correct term is unitary construction, the frame is still there like a body on frame but made lighter and integrally with body panels.

It is the correct term, do a Google on it. It was certainly used in the car manufacturing industry when I worked in it years ago. It may have fallen out of use so you don't hear the term so often.

[Road_Warrior]

Yeah I think 'unibody' is a yank term short for 'unitary body construction'

[jpd80]

Originally Posted by new2ford

It is the correct term, do a Google on it. It was certainly used in the car manufacturing industry when I worked in it years ago. It may have fallen out of use so you don't hear the term so often.

Yeah, my bad.

The term originally applied to aircraft type structures which had an external structural skin
but since the 1950s, Monocoque was then applied to a whole range of integral frame skin designs,
it's also called structural skin, stressed skin, unit body, unibody, unitary construction, or Body Frame Integral (BFI).

Guess I got hung up on one particular type instead of understanding that it's the general term for unified frame and body construction.

On topic,
The main critisism of early unitary construction was that it lacked strength compared to body on frame
which was true but in the past 10 years, crash safety regulations have seen increased vehicle weights
as integral frames are strengthened to vector crash force along multiple paths protecting occupants
in a much better fashion that traditional body on frame vehicles (restricted by the attachment bolts used).
Framed SUVs must now have safety crumple zones which reduces their ultimate strength. That and the
need for reduced weight/increased fuel economy are driving reasons for companies switching to unitary construction.

[russellw]

Our first set of graphical charts are now uploaded into the Tech portal.

Cheers
Russ

[MrZ]

Originally Posted by russellw

Our first set of graphical charts are now uploaded into the Tech portal.

Cheers
Russ

Hi Russell. Just letting you know you made an error - in the light segment you state Fiesta sold 1094 - this is the same figure as Getz. The actual figure for the month was 877.

[russellw]

Originally Posted by Davez621

Hi Russell. Just letting you know you made an error - in the light segment you state Fiesta sold 1094 - this is the same figure as Getz. The actual figure for the month was 877.

That is correct and I have amended it accordingly. It was ok in the chart just not in the text.

Cheers
Russ

[1TUFFUTE]

in regards to the terri add...whats been the biggest letdown or negative for the terri in recent times...FUEL USSAGE PEOPLE. I have no doubt thats exactly what the facebook add is designed and does...delete that perception.

and as for cruze sales it has to be purely a mix of advertising and the badge loyalty. From what weve read in the last few yearsthere is no reason why youd want a holden kia..now cruze over anything ford offers cheap.mondeo, focus and fiesta.

[jpd80]

Originally Posted by 1TUFFUTE

in regards to the terri add...whats been the biggest letdown or negative for the terri in recent times...FUEL USSAGE PEOPLE. I have no doubt thats exactly what the facebook add is designed and does...delete that perception.

and as for cruze sales it has to be purely a mix of advertising and the badge loyalty. From what weve read in the last few yearsthere is no reason why youd want a holden kia..now cruze over anything ford offers cheap.mondeo, focus and fiesta.

Apparently Territory sales are aroun %80-%90 diesels so buyers are really onboard with the new engine and superior fuel economy..

Not much Ford can do about the popularity of Mazda 3, Cruze and Corolla all they can do is get cracking with new Focus,
problem is that sourcing from Germany is a real headache as was found out at the launch of retiring Focus model,
back then, Ford had a holding yard full of mostly base models and just a few zetecs and Ghias but, guess what?
everyone wanted Zetec and Ghias, they sold out and then instant 4 month waiting list but still had a full yard of base models no one wanted....

This time around, Ford should be stocking up with Trend and Titanium with just a few Ambiente otherwise history will repeat itself...

[vztrt]

Originally Posted by 1TUFFUTE

in regards to the terri add...whats been the biggest letdown or negative for the terri in recent times...FUEL USSAGE PEOPLE. I have no doubt thats exactly what the facebook add is designed and does...delete that perception.

I get four things from that add.

1. The car can do 1000k's on a tank (so good fuel economy).
2. The nice thud from the tail gate closing suggests that its a solid vehicle.
3. What the car looks like.
4. Its an Aussie made vehicle.

I don't see a problem with the add, it would be enough to get me to go and see what the vehicle is like. Which is the point of an advertisement IMO.

[EgoFG]

Originally Posted by 1TUFFUTE

in regards to the terri add...whats been the biggest letdown or negative for the terri in recent times...FUEL USSAGE PEOPLE. I have no doubt thats exactly what the facebook add is designed and does...delete that perception. .

That perception is one of my biggest hates - the i6 Petrol is better than the smaller 4 cyl petrol engined cars it is often compared to.
And on par with equivalent petrol engines in Prado and Pajero etc.

[Joe5619]

delete

[vztrt]

Market Insight: Small cars in heavyweight bout

http://www.goauto.com.au/mellor/mell...2578EA0015B5B8

Holden Cruze and Hyundai i30 go head to head in battle for fleet buyers

12 August 2011

By RON HAMMERTON

HOLDEN’S Cruze and Hyundai’s i30 are slugging it out in the Australian small car fleet business, with the locally assembled Cruze winning more business buyers while the imported i30 has the edge in government purchases.

Figures seen by GoAuto show the two vehicles also dominate rental company small-car sales, with at least one in 10 vehicles from both models being unloaded into this low-profit sales arena.

Unsurprisingly, the Cruze and i30 also have the lowest percentage of private sales among the top contenders in the small-car segment, with private buyers taking about 58 per cent of Cruze’s 19,452 sales so far this year, and 48 per cent of i30’s 17,144 units.

This compares with 87 per cent for the segment-leading Mazda3. The Japanese importer has delivered more than 21,000 out of its 24,502 small car sales this year to private purchasers, helping to make Mazda the number one seller of private vehicles in the nation, even though it is only ranked number four in total volume.

The three local car-makers – Toyota, Holden and Ford – have worked on increasing their share of the profitable private retails and reducing their dependence on fleet business in recent years, cutting their percentage of fleet sales from a reported 70 per cent in years gone by to about 55-60 per cent per cent today.

This unwillingness to dump cars into fleets at little or no profit simply to gain throughput at the factory has contributed to a decline in traditional large and medium car volumes in Australia while also opening the door for low-cost importers such as Hyundai to gain traction.

Toyota is still the dominant fleet player by a wide margin, ranking number one in both business and government volumes and number two to Holden in the rental market.

All up, about 60 per cent of Toyota vehicle sales end up on fleets, with most – 44,637 vehicles out of the total 98,108 Toyota sales in Australia this year – going directly to corporate buyers.

But Toyota’s imported small-car contender, the Corolla – once dominant in fleet small-car sales – has eased back to third place behind the Cruze and i30 in business, government and rental fleet sales this year, while its percentage of private buyers has risen to almost 68 per cent – on par with other Japanese imports such as the Mitsubishi Lancer and Subaru Impreza and not far behind the Volkswagen Golf (70 per cent).

Government business got a little more difficult for Toyota and its Corolla recently with Holden’s decision to manufacture the Cruze locally. Under federal government fleet purchasing rules, Australian-made cars – so-called Tier 1 vehicles – have to be given precedence over imports by federal fleet managers.

Only when a suitable vehicle cannot be found among those Tier 1 cars can a federal fleet or senior department official elect to select an imported vehicle.

As Cruze is the sole Tier 1 small car, it should have an advantage over other small cars, at the federal level, at least.

So far, the Hyundai i30 is still number one in government sales by a distance over the Cruze – 2433 to 1540 – revealing some governments and related ‘quangos’ are opting for the Korean car.

The VW Golf – one of the up-and-coming cars of the small-car segment, thanks to favourable Euro exchange rates – has no rental fleet sales and only tiny government fleet participation (110 vehicle or one per cent of Golf volume in the seven months to July).

However, the Golf is emerging as a major player in business fleets, possibly thanks to novated lease customers looking for a bit of European flair.

Almost 29 per cent of the Golf’s 10,523 sales YTD are attributed to business customers – a higher percentage than the Cruze, i30 or Corolla, and way ahead of the Mazda3’s tiny 12.5 per cent.

Similarly, the Subaru Impreza’s percentage of business sales is 30.2 per cent. Subaru also clearly does not bother chasing sales of Impreza in the rental or government markets (although it does sell Forester compact SUVs to those fleets), and maintains a strong private ownership rate of about 68 per cent.

Of all the small cars on the market, only eight nameplates have registered rental fleet sales in 2011, while 16 are credited with government sales.

[In Focus]

I guess you now have to avoid buying white used I30's and Cruzes, along with the traditional Corollas...

[vztrt]

http://www.theage.com.au/business/ca...815-1itwm.html

Car sales rise most in a decade
August 15, 2011 - 12:13PM

Sales of new motor vehicles boasted their biggest rise in over a decade in July as the supply of cars from Japan finally began to return to normal after months of disruption from the March earthquake there.

Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Monday showed that 84,733 vehicles were sold on a seasonally adjusted basis in July, up 8.6 per cent from 77,990 in June. That was the largest monthly rise since December 2000, and the highest level of sales since March.

Sales for July were up 0.9 per cent on the same month last year, a big improvement on June's 11.5 per cent decline.

The marked turnaround strongly suggested the weakness of vehicle sales seen in April and May was more a factor of supply than poor demand, and showed consumers still had the confidence to splash out on big ticket items.

Trade data showed Australian imports from Japan nearly halved back in April, with much of that accounted for by an 81 per cent decline in motor vehicles. Toyota also cut back its production within Australia due to a shortage of parts.

The impact was clear in industry figures that showed Toyota's sales fell by 40 per cent between March and May, giving Holden a rare spell at the top of the national sales ladder.

Imports of cars from Japan then surged in both June and July and are almost back to normal. Toyota's sales duly picked up in July, though its 16 per cent share of the market was still below pre-earthquake levels above 20 per cent.

The other Japanese auto makers had also suffered to various degrees, largely to the benefit of Ford, Holden and Hyundai, though sales are now back to more normal levels.

Reuters

[DJR-351]

To me ^^^that^^^ speaks volumes....

[1TUFFUTE]

Originally Posted by vztrt

I get four things from that add.

1. The car can do 1000k's on a tank (so good fuel economy).
2. The nice thud from the tail gate closing suggests that its a solid vehicle.
3. What the car looks like.
4. Its an Aussie made vehicle.

I don't see a problem with the add, it would be enough to get me to go and see what the vehicle is like. Which is the point of an advertisement IMO.

yeah mate thats why its a good add...you have to put bias asside an think whats the first things that pop into ya mind while ya watching the add...well targetted id say...

[vztrt]

Compact SUVs mean business

http://www.goauto.com.au/mellor/mell...2578F100222A11

User-chooser business buyers push compact SUVs closer to Australian market dominance

22 August 2011

By MARTON PETTENDY

THE popularity of small SUVs continues to boom in Australia, where compact crossovers keep closing in on small and light-sized passenger cars as the nation’s dominant new-vehicle type.

While sales of medium and large SUVs have slumped by 14.5 and 7.8 per cent respectively to July this year, the compact SUV sales surge continued almost unabated (up 2.1 per cent) in a total SUV market that is down 2.9 per cent.

In fact, apart from 4x4 utes and luxury passenger cars and SUVs, compact SUV is the only segment to generate sales growth in a total new-vehicle market that has slumped by 5.9 per cent so far in 2011, thanks largely to an 8.0 per cent decline in passenger car sales.

This year passenger cars have accounted for 56 per cent of all new vehicles sold (down 1.2 percentage points), while SUVs represented 23.3 per cent (up 0.7), outstripping the 0.6 percentage point share growth of light commercials (18.1 per cent).

Having overtaken the declining large car segment (which 4x4 utes have also done this year), the compact SUV sector (67,777 sales to July this year) now lies within 11,250 sales of light cars – Australia’s second most popular vehicle type with 79,026 sales, behind small cars (139,263).

However, closer inspection of Australia’s love affair with small SUVs shows that most growth in the segment comes from fleet buyers, with rental, government and, in particular, business buyers representing an increasingly large chunk of sales.

Just as compact high-riding wagons are increasingly being substituted for traditional passenger cars, so too is the unprecedented growth in ‘user-chooser’ sales blurring the lines between sales to private individuals and buyers of company cars, as more Australians choose to salary-sacrifice and/or undertake novated vehicle leases.

Some readers might be surprised to learn that a higher proportion of SUV sales go to fleet buyers than passenger cars, with 57 per cent of all new cars going to private buyers and just 51 per cent of all new SUVs going to non-fleet purchasers, while only 27 per cent of light commercial customers are private individuals (for an overall average of 50 per cent).

With only six exceptions, sales of every mainstream compact SUV are down this year, meaning all of the segment’s growth has come from Ford’s evergreen Escape (up 26.3 per cent), Hyundai’s relatively new ix35 (up 91.4 per cent), Kia’s Sportage (up 30.4 per cent), Mitsubishi’s sub-compact ASX (up a massive 945 per cent) and Nissan’s X-Trail (up 41.2 per cent) and Dualis (up 15.2 per cent).

Subaru’s Forester has been the country’s top-selling compact SUV since 2008 and, despite a 13.2 per cent sales slide, looks set to claim that title for the fourth consecutive year, but last month it also attracted more ‘business’ buyers than any other compact SUV.

More than half of all Forester sales in July went to business buyers, a feat unmatched by any other compact SUV except Subaru’s other small crossover, the Outback.

Conversely, Mazda’s CX-7 attracted a higher proportion of private buyers than any other compact SUV last month, when it was the fifth-best-selling vehicle in its class, but so far this year continues to trail the Forester, ix35, RAV4, X-Trail and Dualis.

Despite the fact that – at odds with the rest of the Subaru model range, which traditionally attracts a strong mix of private buyers – relatively few private individuals have purchased the Forester this year, the long-running Japanese SUV continues to hold a dominant 11.2 per cent share of the compact SUV segment.

Closing the gap is the Hyundai’s fast-selling ix35, which now holds a 10 per cent share of the segment in second place. Once again, however, last month more than 400 ix35s went to businesses from a total of 1063 sales, just 18 sales short of the Forester.

Unlike the Forester, which remains one of the few mainstream compact SUVs not to be available in a cut-price front-wheel drive variant, almost half of all ix35 buyers were private individuals, but the ix35 also attracted more than 1500 government sales – more than any other compact SUV.

Of course, the success of the three-year-old Forester and the ix35 – launched here in February 2010 – has come at the expense of Toyota’s once-dominant RAV4, the current generation of which dates back to 2006, before a 2WD version was released here in April 2010.

Last month the vast majority of RAV4 buyers were private individuals and Toyota’s stalwart compact SUV attracted fewer business and government buyers than either the Forester or ix35.

RAV4 sales were down more than 20 per cent in July and remain down 19.5 per cent year-to-date.

Having snared just 9.5 per cent of all compact SUV sales so far this year – its lowest share of the segment for some time – the RAV4 is in danger of losing third place to Nissan’s X-Trail, showing just how significant fleet buyers have become in the burgeoning compact SUV class.