Local car manufacturers may be in trouble as vehicle sales have reduced by 20 per cent within the past year.

Imported models are taking over sales in Australia with a total of 83,146 vehicles sold in March whereas only 10,838 locally made cars were sold, according to the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries.

Wagons and sedans are the main locally-made vehicles sold, however new models created by Holden such as the Cruze will help Australian models sell more.

There is significant evidence that larger cars are no longer as popular as smaller, more compact cars. Compact SUV sales rose by almost 10 per cent last year and Volkswagen’s Tiguan sales doubled compared to March 2010, from 565 to 1107 sales.

Mid-sized SUV’s slumped by 8.1 per cent in March and included vehicles like the Ford Territory.

Large cars suffered the most with a sales drop of 20.2 per cent from last year and Ford’s Falcon had just 1719 sales compared to 2496 sales last year. However, in its first three months of this year, Ford’s imported models jumped by more than 40 per cent.

Holden’s Commodore sales still remains strong as it maintained the number one spot for March, however the Mazda3 took the lead with the most amount of sales for the first three months of this year (Holden – 10,644, Mazda – 11,159).

Toyota still remains number one in relation to manufacturers, selling 18,466 vehicles in March and 47,887 for 2011.

Holden comes second with 29,515 sales, followed by Mazda with 22,883 sales, Ford with 22,713 sales and finally Hyundai with 20,143 sales.

Due to the March figures, it is likely advertisement for locally-made models will boost in order to increase sales for April.