What We Learned Tracking 191 EOFY Car Deals in 2026

Image credit: BYD Australia

Every year the end of the financial year turns into the biggest new-car sale on the calendar, and every year the same word does a lot of heavy lifting in the ads: deal. So this time we tracked them. Across the 2026 EOFY run-out we logged 191 published offers spanning 31 brands, then went back through our own pricing data to see which ones actually moved the number and which ones just moved the words around. Here is what the data showed, not what the brochures said.

1. Chinese brands ran the show

This was the clearest pattern by a mile. Chinese brands accounted for 113 of the 191 deals we tracked, which is 59% of everything on offer. BYD ran the most with 32 separate offers, MG was right behind on 30, and once you add GWM, Chery, Jaecoo, LDV and JAC the picture is a market where the value brands are setting the pace and everyone else is reacting to them.

If you want to understand why the established brands are discounting harder than they used to, this is the answer. When a third of your showroom rivals are new names with long warranties and sharp drive-away pricing, you either match them or you sit on stock. You can see the full picture in our best Chinese cars guide.

2. A third of "drive-away" deals weren't actually cheaper

This is the one worth pinning to the fridge. A drive-away price includes the on-road costs you normally pay on top of the list price, things like stamp duty, registration and CTP. So a drive-away figure is not automatically a discount. A genuine drive-away deal is one that lands below the RRP. Plenty don't.

Of the 100 drive-away offers we could line up against a list price, only 52 were genuinely below RRP. Another 34 were priced above the RRP, because the on-roads had simply been folded in and the headline made it sound like a saving. The rest landed roughly level. Same word, very different maths. If you only remember one thing about reading a car ad, make it this: a drive-away price is only a deal when you can see what it beats. Our live deals page always shows the drive-away figure against the RRP for exactly this reason.

3. The genuinely big cuts were utes, vans and slow sellers

Where the savings were real, they were often very real. The biggest drive-away gap against list price was a commercial EV, and the rest of the leaderboard is mostly utes and 4x4s, the stock that piles up when a financial year ends.

4. The finance rates rarely matched the headline

Low-rate finance was the second most common deal type after drive-away pricing, with 46 offers using it. But the comparison rates told a more honest story than the big numbers on the banner. Across the finance deals we logged, the rates ran from 0.88% all the way to 6.24%, and the median sat at 2.9%. Only a single offer dipped under 1%. The catchy "from 0.9%" style headlines were real, but they were the exception, usually tied to one specific variant or a shorter term, not the whole range.

5. The cash bonuses went big at the top

Beyond drive-away pricing, 29 offers came as a bonus or deposit contribution and another 11 as straight cashback. The largest sat on the more expensive metal, where a few thousand dollars is easier to give away.

6. Electric and plug-in cars were discounted hardest of all

Split the 191 deals by fuel type and a third of them, 63 in total, were electric or plug-in hybrid. That is well ahead of those powertrains' share of the showroom, which tells you the brands were leaning on EOFY to shift electrified stock that has been slower to move at full price. If you have been waiting for the right moment on an EV or PHEV, the run-out is consistently it. Our cheapest PHEVs guide tracks where those prices land the rest of the year.

7. The 30 June cliff is real

There is a reason the last week of June feels frantic. Of the 191 deals we tracked, 150 expired on exactly 30 June. Only a handful ran a few days either side. The financial year is a hard line for dealer targets, so the genuinely sharp clearance pricing clusters in the final fortnight and then it is gone. If a deal looks good in early June, it is usually worth waiting to see whether it gets better by the 28th. If it looks good on the 29th, that is your window.

What to take into next EOFY

Three things hold up across all 191 deals. First, check the drive-away price against the RRP every single time, because a third of them were not actually a discount. Second, the deepest genuine cuts were on utes, vans, 4x4s and electrified stock, not the volume sellers everyone wants. Third, the timing matters more than the marketing: the real prices arrive in the last fortnight of June and vanish on 1 July. We will keep tracking every deal year-round on our deals page and flag the genuine RRP cuts on our price cuts page, so you do not have to wait for June to find one.

Figures drawn from the 191 published EOFY offers CarSorted tracked across 31 brands through June 2026. Drive-away comparisons use each model's manufacturer list price where available. Drive-away prices include on-road costs and vary by state.