New and used car sales in June and July exceeded pre-Covid levels, but dealerships say they are preparing for more difficult months ahead.
Southern Motor Group managing director Ken Cummings said his yards had had a turnaround in sales after "no sales, basically" in April.
"It certainly is way ahead of corresponding June-July of last year."
Mr Cummings said it was not just happening in Otago and Southland — that up and down the country dealerships had enjoyed a boom in new vehicle sales.
Figures from the NZ Transport Agency show there were just 140 new vehicles registered in the lockdown month of April — an 85% drop on the same month last year.
But new registrations appeared to pick up in May and in June and July exceeded what they were last year.
A total of 1088 new cars sold in Otago and Southland in June, compared with 979 the year before.
And that figure rose to 1147 in July, up from 1067 last year.
MTF Finance said it saw sales volumes decrease 90% during the lockdown, but since Alert Level 1 began, sales had exceeded pre-pandemic levels.
"We’re quite surprised how buoyant the market is at present and it has certainly exceeded our expectations," MTF chief executive Glen Todd said.
Both Mr Todd and Mr Cummings attributed the drive in car sales to people sitting at home under lockdown, considering their options.
Cooke Howlison managing director John Marsh said his dealership had also had improved sales in June-July.
"May, June, July — we’ve had three very good months.
"In April the market was down over 90%, so we had not a lot of sales at all in April — so there’s a big hit then and we’ve had three good months since then.
Nationally for the year, car sales were down 24%, but at Cooke Howlison they were down just 3%.
Pent-up demand from April was driving demand as well as some low-interest finance options, Mr Marsh said.
"The other one is obviously the travel"
"This time of the year there’s a lot of people usually travelling and I think some of that money’s been diverted into buying new cars."
He expected the final quarter to be "reasonably difficult".
Jacob McSweeny
