Market Insight: Keeping it in the family

LIKE families, there can be a lot of offspring and no clear shared DNA with the fusing of automotive brands under a common – sometimes invisible – parent company.

Although they operate under separate brands in many markets, including Australia, ownerships and relationships can alter the list of car manufacturers by size.

One example is Stellantis, better known for the products by its individual brands, including Fiat, Peugeot, Jeep and Iveco, the latter being 27 per cent owned by the Agnelli family which is also the biggest shareholder in Stellantis with a 14.4 per cent stake.

Stellantis also includes Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Citroen, Dodge, DS, Fiat Professional, Lancia, Maserati, Opel, Ram and Vauxhall. Not all brands under this vast umbrella are sold in Australia but those that do combine to have sold 13,124 units this year to date.

This is a decent sales number, beating big names including Audi (10,529), Honda (11,067) and LDV (11,469) and only 899 units shy of the more public performance of Tesla (14,023). 

By the sum of its parts, Stellantis has a relatively high number of sales in a market that is not particularly geared towards its non-mainstream products.

Mercedes-Benz Group and its Daimler Truck spin-off have sold a combined 29,650 units this year through the separate cars and vans operations, as well as through its 12 per cent ownership of Aston Martin and truck-makers , Freightliner, Fuso, Mercedes-Benz and Western Star.

That sales figure makes it the ninth most popular automotive manufacturer in Australia.

Volkswagen Group shifted 42,723 units through its passenger-car brands sold in Australia – Audi, Bentley, Cupra, Lamborghini, Porsche, Skoda and Volkswagen, plus truck operations that operate under the family-owned Traton group comprising the International, MAN and Scania brands.

The Volkswagen brand name alone – through popular individual models including the Golf, Amarok, Polo and Passat – sold 21,643 units this year. 

It shows that introducing the family makes a big impression to an audience. Combining the family members pushes Volkswagen Group to Australia’s sixth biggest-selling car company.

The Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance has sold 88,635 vehicles this year, including 60,523 from Mitsubishi and just four from sportscar brand Alpine. 

Some cross sharing of products exists – the Renault Trafic is the same as the Mitsubishi Express for example – but they all sell under the Alliance umbrella. 

Australia may soon sell the Romanian Dacia brand (although it may be a badge-engineered job with Renault branding added as is the case in some markets) to further boost the Majority French-owned Alliance’s sales numbers.

Hyundai and Kia share ownership – Hyundai owns 33.88 per cent of Kia, which in turn has shares of varying percentages in 22 Hyundai companies – and, together with luxury brand Genesis and Hyundai trucks, sold 119,272 units in the first nine months of this year.

Toyota remains the biggest brand in Australia, even by its self-badged products, with extra contributions made by Lexus (5358 units YTD) and Hino (4745 deliveries). Daihatsu is also in the Toyota family but not included here as the brand is no longer sold in Australia.

We now also have to add Subaru, which officially became an affiliated Toyota company in early 2020 when Toyota increased its shareholding to 20 per cent from 16.85 per cent. 

That adds 25,946 units to the Toyota family in Australia in the first nine months of 2022, enabling Toyota to now claim 212,459 sales.

BMW also has Mini and Rolls-Royce, to produce a total of 20,847 sales in the same nine months.

Volvo has 8972 sales to its name plus those of associates Lotus (62 units) and Polestar (779).

Volvo Trucks has no affiliation with Volvo Car (owned by Geely) after breaking away in 2012, and is is the biggest vehicle manufacturer in Australia. Globally, it owns the Mack, UD and Volvo truck labels that sold a combined 3073 units in Australia this year.

While these alliances and affiliations produce big numbers for their family members, there are still individual car-makers which are happily single.

These include Suzuki (16,911 sales YTD), Isuzu Ute (27,155), Honda (11,067) and, proving solitude has its rewards, Mazda with a healthy 73,854 sales to the end of September – although more than 10,000 of these were the BT-50 ute that is produced in partnership with Isuzu.