MAZDA is confident that it will eclipse last year’s record 114,024 sales tally in 2016 with continuing growth in the SUV segments, but supply issues with key models such as the Mazda3 and concerns over market stability may blunt its strong first half result.

Speaking to GoAuto at the launch of the CX-9 seven-seat SUV, Mazda Australia managing director Martin Benders said that he expected sales to reach just shy of the 120,000 mark, based on January to June numbers.

“We’ve had a record first half, less than 1000 short of 61,000,” he said. “Normally the industry is roughly 50/50 year-to-year, and normally it varies around half a per cent, and we’re the same, so you’d expect we’d do 120,000.

“But I just don’t think the way things are panning out that we can get enough stock to do that. 118,000 (sales) is reasonably conservative.”

Mr Benders added that Mazda will not go out of its way to secure more vehicles in order to stoke demand and hit record sales numbers artificially.

“We’re not trying to buy extra stock to go harder, because we still have some issues about what will the currency do, what will the government do, what will happen to confidence and so forth,” he revealed. “We’re letting demand pull production forward.

“So then it becomes a matter of if we can get access to extra capacity because other markets are letting go, then we can feed that. But we’ll let the market draw it through rather than us push it. We don’t want to get into a push situation.”

Sufficient stock of the high-flying Mazda3 small car will be an issue for some months, as it transitions into its series two update for the 2017 model year.

“Our sales rate over the last couple of months has been better than we expected, which means we’re running stock down faster than ahead of the upgraded model due later this quarter,” Mr Benders said. “So that will be another reason why we will be short of stock.”

While the 3 accounted for exactly one-third of total Mazda volume to the end of June with 20,088 sales, Australia’s former best-seller is down 1.7 per cent over the same period last year, relegating it to third spot in the sales race behind the Toyota Corolla (20,544) and heavily price-driven Hyundai i30 (22,857).

Similarly, last year’s best-selling light car, the Mazda2, has suffered at the hands of the aggressively-marketed Hyundai Accent, slipping 6.5 per cent at the half-way point this year to second spot with 7190 sales, versus the Accent’s 8358 units – a 102.3 per cent improvement.

It’s still a three-horse race with Toyota’s ageing Yaris coming in third with 6485 registrations, but clearly both Japanese cars must lift their game if they’ are to reel in the Korean car.

Nevertheless, the news is much brighter for Mazda in the SUV sphere, with the small CX-3 and medium CX-5 dominating their classes with 9372 and 12,593 sales respectively. With the new-generation CX-9 about to come on line, the company expects to cement its reputation as one of the go-to brands for a broad spectrum of SUV and crossover buyers alike.

According to Mazda Australia marketing director Alastair Doak, Mazda has worked hard to achieve that distinction in a relatively short space of time. It also has meant that the organisation is neither reliant on the performance of one particular model range such as the Mazda3, nor completely at the mercy of fluctuating passenger car sales in general.

“Even at the end of CX-7 (in early 2012), we were not even regarded as an SUV company,” he said. “We’ve since totally turned that round in the last five years, which is pretty satisfying really.

“And I think that is one of our strengths; we’re strong across a lot of segments. We may not be number one in every segment, but we have a real strong base in a lot of them. And that’s good, it gives us stability and it gives us protection.

“If one segment is up and one is down; you’re not relying on just one model. We’re not just the Mazda3 car company any more, which is cool. It is still our top seller, but it is not 50 per cent of our volume anymore, it is now in the 30s.

“We are now spread across a lot of segments, which is a nice place to be.”

In 2007, the first year of sales of the CX-7, Mazda sold 9021 SUVs, just 12 per cent of its total of 77,734 sales.

Last year, Mazda’s SUV haul was 41,176, or 36 per cent of its massive 114,024 total.

By Byron Mathioudakis