1. The Average Car on Australian Roads Has Never Been Older

The Australian Automotive Aftermarket Association put the average vehicle age at 11.2 years in 2024, the highest on record. Older cars need more parts, more often, and cost of living pressure is pushing owners to repair rather than replace. That's a growing base of vehicles needing brakes, batteries, filters, and suspension work, and every one of those owners is searching for parts before they ever call a workshop.

2. Online Parts and Accessories Sales Are Still Growing, Even in a Maturing Market

IBISWorld puts the Australian online automotive parts and accessories sales industry at $615.7 million in 2026, with moderate growth returning after a post-pandemic correction. The easy pandemic-era gains are gone. What's left is steadier, more durable demand built on better logistics and better online experiences, which is a healthier trend for anyone building for the long term rather than chasing a short spike.

3. Marketplaces Have Become the Default Browsing Channel

Third party retailers, not brand owned stores, account for around 70% of Australia's automotive aftermarket ecommerce sales. Customers are already comfortable buying parts through eBay and Amazon before they think to check a dealership. That's a browsing habit already set in place, and it means the fight isn't convincing customers to shop online. It's convincing them to shop with you instead of a marketplace that has no idea whether a part actually fits their car.

4. The Profit Is Moving to the Back End

New car margins have been thinning for years, and that pressure isn't easing. Front end vehicle sales, the department that used to carry a dealership's bottom line, is no longer where the safest profit sits. The dealerships coming out ahead are increasingly anchored by their back end, parts, service, and accessories, not the showroom floor. That shift changes what a parts and accessories ecommerce store actually is. It stops being a side project bolted onto the department that makes the real money, and starts being the department with the most room left to grow. Treating it as an afterthought is a bet against a trend that's already moving the other way.

5. Most Dealers Still Aren't Set Up to Capture It

Industry estimates put the share of franchised dealers actively selling parts online at well under half, with historical figures as low as one in five. Whatever the exact number in the Australian market today, the pattern holds. Adoption is uneven, and the dealers who move first are picking up customers that a slower competitor down the road hasn't figured out how to reach yet.

6. Customers Expect a Hybrid Buying Journey, Not a Pure Online or Offline One

Click and mortar behaviour, researching and paying online, then collecting or having a part delivered, is now the norm rather than the exception in Australia's aftermarket. Customers aren't choosing between your website and your counter. They're expecting both to work together, and a dealer whose online store and physical parts department feel disconnected is asking the customer to do the joining up themselves.

7. Accessories and Customisation Are a Growth Engine of Their Own

Australia's love affair with dual cab utes and 4x4s has created sustained demand for bull bars, canopies, roof racks, suspension upgrades, and lighting, particularly around the Hilux, Ranger, and Triton range. This is a category built for ecommerce. Customers already research accessories extensively online before they buy, and a well built configurator or fitment-accurate accessory catalogue turns that research phase into a sale instead of losing it to a specialist aftermarket retailer.

8. Electrification Is Raising the Cost of Getting Fitment Wrong

Electrical components, batteries, sensors, wiring, charging related parts, already represent around a fifth of Australia's automotive aftermarket parts spend, and that share is climbing as hybrid and EV ownership grows. These parts carry less room for a fitment mistake than a set of wiper blades. As the parts mix shifts toward electrified components, the dealers with clean, accurate fitment data will be the ones customers trust to get it right the first time.

9. Doing Nothing Has a Cost, Even If It Doesn't Show Up on Today's P&L

None of these trends are dramatic on their own. Together, they describe a market quietly moving past the dealers who wait. Every year a parts department relies solely on walk-ins and phone orders is a year of steady, compounding growth handed to a marketplace seller or a competing dealer instead. The window to build a first-mover advantage in your local market is still open, but it narrows a little more with each of these trends.

Where This Leaves Your Parts Department

None of these trends demand you rebuild your dealership overnight. They do suggest that treating parts and accessories ecommerce as optional is a decision with a real cost attached, even if that cost is invisible until a competitor starts capturing the customers you didn't reach.

If you're weighing up what a genuine parts and accessories ecommerce strategy would take for your dealership, that's worth talking through properly.

Start the conversation.