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Some recent commentary on the Euro / Mazda6 sales this month.

Honda's fortunes Down Under are still largely linked to private sales, though the maker is resourcing its sales infrastructure to target user-chooser fleets. Mizuno says both Honda's Euro and the Mazda6 are key indicators of the confidence of private buyers and is watching their respective performances keenly.

In July the new Honda midsizer logged 894 registrations -- almost 200 up on the outgoing model at the same time last year. It also outsold its traditional foe, Mazda6 by over 120 units.

In contrast, the Mazda was down 150 units on the same month last year. Volume borne of its recent price reductions is yet to hit the statistics. Nonetheless, the successful run-out of the model by Mazda earlier this year still has it well up on YTD totals.

But things are actually looking good, says Mazda's local Managing Director, Doug Dickson -- not just for Mazda, but the entire Australian economy.

The importer has revised its sales forecast for 2008 up 2.5 per cent. By the end of this year, says Mazda, the company expects to have sold 82,000 cars, a 5.5 per cent increase on the 77,734 units sold for 2007.

If sales of the Mazda6 are languishing, the Mazda2 is more than picking up the slack.

"We're seeing unprecedented demand for the economical and exciting Mazda2 range," said Dickson. "With 9,248 sales to July, the Mazda2 is up 118 percent, exactly 5,000, on the same period last year."

Despite being a bit long in the tooth these days, the Mazda3 has still sold 20,297 units for the 2008 year, to date. So Mazda is not seeing too much doom and gloom in the market yet. The company reckons that the whole market is only half a per cent down on 2007 sales if you look at the June and July figures combined. Whilst many fleet buyers either spend the remainder of their financial year budget in June or start spending big in July, it's the private buyers that seem to be letting the market down over the last couple of months.