Toyota range 2016
Ken Gratton9 Jan 2016
ADVICE

What is VFACTS?

Sales statistics would be meaningless without a market framework to provide context

It has long been said that Aussies will bet on two flies crawling up a wall.

Wherever there's a hint of competition, we'll be in it like a shot. Whether it's a federal government election, the top 40 music charts or the footy league ladder, we want to know how our side is faring in the rough-and-tumble of daily life.

VFACTS provides that sort of information for the automotive industry.

Established in 1992 by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI), VFACTS breaks down monthly sales statistics to reveal how new cars are selling, by brand and by model. Members of the FCAI – principally the car companies operating in Australia – and those willing to pay can receive information compiled down to a granular level.

VFACTS information in the public domain typically reports the overall performance of a model range, but the data you have to buy will also tell you which individual player scored the most runs. Translated to the automotive industry context, that level of detail will tell the car companies' product planners – the people who decide on price and specification for a new car sold in Australia – whether the diesel automatic is more highly prized in the market than a turbocharged petrol variant with manual transmission.

But for most of us, VFACTS breaks down to just model level. You won't find out, for instance, whether the base model Ford Falcon is being outsold by the XR6 unless a car company executive tells you as much.

Here's basically how it works: All the distributors and local factories pool their respective sales information at the end of each month. The data is collated by a company appointed by the FCAI – currently IHS Automotive in Melbourne. A full report, with a media release supplied by the FCAI is issued three working days after the end of the reporting month. So information concerning December 2015 became available on the third working day of January 2016, which was January 6.

The complete VFACTS report released each month by the FCAI uses an abbreviation, YTD (year to date) to qualify the sales figures for the year up to the end of that particular month. Sales figures are supplied in a tabular format, with monthly or yearly (YTD) numbers printed alongside the corresponding figure for the previous year.

In July 2015, for example, the Toyota Corolla had pulled well ahead of the Mazda3 and was over 2000 units in front, but VFACTS figures revealed that for the same period in 2014 – ie: from January through to July 2014, inclusive – the Mazda was only 21 sales in arrears of the Corolla.

Here's how that looked:

Mazda3
July 2015: 2825
July 2014: 3421
YTD 2015: 23,252
YTD 2014: 25,945

Toyota Corolla
July 2015: 3573
July 2014: 3800
YTD 2015: 25,323
YTD 2014: 25,966

VFACTS figures provide monthly and YTD variance too, expressed in raw numbers and in percentages.

The full report also provides breakdowns of the following information:

Total vehicles by state,
Total vehicles by class (Passenger, SUV, light commercial, heavy commercial),
Total vehicles by market segment,
Total vehicles by marque (brand),
Total vehicles by class and buyer type (Private, business, government, rental),
Total vehicles by buyer type, class and fuel type (Diesel, electric, hybrid, LPG, petrol),
Total vehicles built by local manufacturers (Ford, Holden, Toyota),
Total vehicles by originating country,

But the information everyone wants to know is the sales success of cars by make, model and market segment. This is where you compare apples with apples.

Segments are subsets of Classes. When someone describes a car as "class-leading" (as in class-leading dynamics, class-leading value or class-leading safety), they more likely mean it's "segment-leading". For the purpose of VFACTS reporting, new cars are divided by class and then by segment.

The passenger car class includes all sedans, hatchbacks, coupes, convertibles and people movers, but broken down into their respective segments, which are decided by the size and packaging of each car, with a pricing threshold so that prestige and semi-prestige cars aren't being compared unfavourably for sales with volume sellers.

A recent introduction to VFACTS is the micro car segment, for vehicles like Fiat 500, Holden Barina Spark and Nissan Micra.

The light car segment is one size up and includes vehicles like Ford Fiesta, Honda Jazz, Renault Clio and Suzuki Swift. There's a separate segment for cars of this size priced above $25,000 (Audi A1 and MINI, for instance). Both equate broadly to the 'B' segment in other markets.

Small cars are larger again (C Segment) and include the volume-selling Hyundai i30, Mazda3 and Toyota Corolla. A separate segment exists for cars like the BMW 1 Series and Volvo V40, nominally priced above $40,000. Not every car sold fits neatly into one or the other segment, but that decision often rests on where the majority of the range sits, relative to the pricing threshold.

Medium cars (C/D Segment) are also split according to price – above or below $60,000. Toyota Camry has this segment locked up below the pricing threshold, and Mercedes C-Class is the top seller above the threshold.

Large cars include Ford Falcon and Holden Commodore. This segment is also home to the Toyota Aurion, which is based on the nominally mid-sized Camry and roughly the same size. What sets the Aurion apart from the Camry is its six-cylinder drivetrain – and this is one possible basis for a car company choosing to allocate a car to one segment rather than another.

vfacts equinox

Above $70,000 is where the prestige large cars sit... cars like Audi A6, BMW 5 Series, Jaguar XF, Lexus GS and Mercedes E-Class.

Upper large cars are the Holden Caprice and Chrysler 300 below $100,000 and Audi A8, BMW 7 Series, Jaguar XJ, Lexus LS and Mercedes S-Class above the threshold.

People mover segments are split at $60,000, with Citroen C4 Grand Picasso, Kia Rondo and Toyota Tarago below and the Mercedes Valente above.

Sports cars (Sports segment) are broken up three ways, by two price thresholds: up to $80,000, between $80,000 and $200,000, and above $200,000. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that the Mazda MX-5 will be allocated to the cheapies, the Porsche Boxster makes it into the 'in-betweenies' and the Mercedes-AMG GT is in among the top-shelf offerings.

While it's tempting to think the sports segments will feature only hard-core two-seat roadsters with rear-wheel drive, the Audi A3 Convertible is counted in the segment up to $80,000, as is Holden Cascada. The Sports segments also end up being a catch-all for models that we might think of as muscle cars – like Ford's Mustang, for instance, and the Nissan GT-R.

In the SUV class, the segments range across small < $40,000 to upper large > $100,000. Judged by footprint, small SUVs are often roughly the same length and width as light cars, but riding higher of course. The medium SUV segments (with a $60,000 division between mainstream and prestige) straddle the dimensional divide between small and medium cars.

Large SUVs equate to large passenger cars in size, and the upper large SUVs (basically Toyota LandCruiser and Nissan Patrol below $100,000) are around the same length as a Holden Caprice. The Caprice is actually slightly longer than the LC200, but also narrower.

In recent years the FCAI has rejigged the SUV class, renaming what was previously the 'compact SUV' segment as the small SUV segment and transferring some formerly compact SUVs, like the Mitsubishi Outlander, into the medium SUV segment. At the same time, formerly medium SUVs – Ford Territory and Mitsubishi Pajero – were moved up to the large SUV segment.

Previously, the SUV class hadn't existed. Off-road wagons were 'All-terrain wagons' in the light commercial vehicle class of VFACTS, and the Pajero had been a medium off-road wagon from since before the inception of VFACTS itself. Today's Pajero is 80mm longer than the 80 Series LandCruiser of 1990, so the Mitsubishi's migration to large SUV was a long time coming.

Hiving off SUVs from the light commercial vehicle class reflects the rise of soft-road SUVs – frequently without any off-road capability at all in the case of the two-wheel drive variants. And the more recent change from compact to small SUVs also holds a mirror up to the market's infatuation with high-riding hatchbacks of the CX-3/HR-V kind.

Light commercial vehicles are reported by VFACTS in accordance with the following segmentation:
Light Buses < 20 Seats (MB Sprinter bus, Toyota Hiace),
Light Buses => 20 Seats (Mitsubishi Rosa, Toyota Coaster),
Vans/CC <= 2.5t (Citroen Berlingo, Volkswagen Caddy),
Vans/CC 2.5-3.5t (Ford Transit, Mercedes Vito),
PU/CC 4X2 (Ford Ranger, Mitsubishi Triton, Toyota HiLux),
PU/CC 4X4 (As above).

To translate, 'CC' is 'cab chassis' and vans in LCVs (light commercial vehicles) can be below 2.5-tonne GVM (Gross Vehicle Mass) or between 2.5 and 3.5 tonnes. 'PU' stands for 'pick-up', which also includes car-derived utes like the Commodore-based Holden Ute and the Ford Falcon. Most of the action in light commercial vehicles is in the Pick-up/cab chassis segments.

VFACTS segmentation is under constant review by the FCAI and its members. Sometimes the choice of one segment or another for a particular model will seem arbitrary and controversial. In that case, consider this: it could be a legacy issue dating back years, and there's just as likely someone within the FCAI fighting for it to change.

Pictured: Toyota range as of September 2015 (left to right, front to rear)
Aurion (large),
Corolla (small),
Camry (medium),
Prius (small),
86 (sports),
Yaris (light),
Prius c (light),
Prius v (small),
Rukus (small),
FJ Cruiser (large SUV),
RAV4 (medium SUV),
HiLux (PU/CC),
Tarago (people mover),
Kluger (large SUV),
LandCruiser 70 Series (PU/CC 4X4),
LandCruiser 200 Series (upper large SUV),
LandCruiser Prado (large SUV),
Hiace (van 2.5-3.5t),
Coaster (bus >20 seat)

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Written byKen Gratton
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