Australia’s growing affection for value-added Chinese cars has helped to produce another showroom record.

Total sales in June were an all-time best and, even more significantly, BYD from China came within 243 cars of taking Toyota’s top spot in showrooms.

The margin between first and second is a reflection of BYD’s aggressive marketing of what it calls ’new energy vehicles’, hybrids and battery-electric vehicles, and a very poor first-half score for the T-Brand.

But BYD was not alone, as GWM, Chery and MG all continued to run in the Top 10 brands overall.

The Chinese brands are also making things tough for a range of historic Australian favourites, including Honda, Subaru and Suzuki. They still make good cars but miss the ‘bells and whistles’ impact of the Chinese newbies and have largely given up on competing with prices and instead focus on selling more cars at a higher margin.

For Toyota, the June result can be considered a disaster, as its first-half sales total of 95,141 deliveries was off by more than 25,000, and four percentage points of market share, from 2025.

In response, it has announced a four-car effort to refresh showrooms – with a LandCruiser ‘performance hybrid’, plug-in hybrid RAV4, larger Bz4X electric SUV and the first battery-electric HiLux – as well as additional supplies from Japan and Thailand.

“People think Toyota is losing. We’re not,” Toyota’s vice-president of sales, marketing and franchise operations, John Pappas, told starts@60.

“We’re catching up. We’re catching up on demand. We’ve been able to get the stock.

“We anticipate supply improving across our key models, average wait times reducing and we see customer demand remaining extremely strong.”

Toyota Australia has also strong-armed company headquarters in Japan into finding an extra 30,000 cars for the boats to Australia.

“It’s a big number, but we’re up for that,” Pappas said.

He promised the wait times for the most-popular Toyota models, including the HiLux pick-up, would be slashed dramatically to only three months.

He denied any panic over the rapid sales growth for the top Chinese contenders – led by BYD, GWM and Chery – and instead pointed to a lack of supply across the whole Toyota range.

“I don’t look at it as offensive or defensive. We’ve got very strong customer demand. It’s about satisfying customer needs,” Pappas said.

“We’ve been down, based on supply. And that’s really impacted our supply and volumes. Supply is the main reason why we are down.

“We’ve got a whole team now that are getting ready for the next six months. In terms of supply, logistics and the dealer network.

“It’s a high percentage. And we’ve got to deliver that in six moths. It’s a big number, but we’re up for that.”

Toyota full-time target for 2026 is now “more than” 230,000 vehicles, and Pappas said it will be up to Toyota to hit the number regardless of Chinese efforts.

“First and foremost, we respect all competition. It doesn’t matter where they come from. We’re focussed on what we’re doing,” he said.