Private buyers armed with boosted confidence came back blazing on the market in June and pushed the month's new car sales to a record high, according to the latest figures released by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) on Monday.

FCAI's June data showed that up to 108,722 units of new vehicles were sold, which is an improvement of 5.7 percent from the figures posted a year earlier as FCAI chief executive Andrew McKellar declared that the June sales numbers was the highest selling month ever and it "showed a clear demonstration of renewed confidence in the marketplace."

Mr McKellar said that the industry has been encouraged by the prospect of revitalised confidence from private buyers "who have returned to the market in greater numbers and have taken over the momentum previously attributed to business sales."

He said that in the calendar year-to-date, about 531,168 vehicles have rolled out from dealers' outlet, which a spike of 16.7 percent from the same period in 2009, adding that in consideration of the solid market performance seen over the past six months, "the industry has upgraded its annual sales forecast to in excess of 980,000 units, up from our original forecast of 940,000 sales."

Mr McKellar said that the present projection is a positive and still cautious outlook for the second half of the year, as the industry continuously "assess the impact of factors on the market such as previous interest rate increases."

FCAI figures showed that sales of sport utility vehicles went up to 30.9 percent in the first six months of the present year while passenger cars sales increased by 15.8 percent with heavy commercials sales and light commercials sales both turning over positive figures at 8.8 percent and 5.8 percent respectively.

Again, Toyota headed the pack of top car makers as it retained the largest market share of 20. 2 percent while General Motors Holden followed in a distant second with market share of 12.9 percent with Ford Motors securing the third spot with a share of 9.3 percent.