The latest new car sales data published on Thursday has revealed that year to date, the ACT's new car market is 19.4 per cent down on the same five-month period last year.

The ACT is the only jurisdiction to sit in negative territory this year, as nationally new vehicles sales in May marched past 100,000.

All other states and territories are firing on all cylinders. Even Victoria, which has received a major economic setback in the past few weeks through a state-wide COVID lockdown, has recorded a 29.5 per cent recovery this year compared with the COVID-hit 2020.

NSW sales are up by 38.9 per cent year to date and recorded a 69.1 per cent lift in sales during May, compared with the same month last year.

New vehicle sales across the country climbed by 68.5 per cent last month compared with May 2020, when showrooms were deathly quiet and buyers stayed away in their thousands.

Yet during the pandemic market crash of 2020, the ACT was the national shining light. Part of the protection from the fallout elsewhere was as a result of Canberra's massive January 2020 hailstorm, in which thousands of cars were written off by insurers and local dealers reaped the benefit in replacement orders.

Sales across the ACT rose by 22.6 per cent for 2020 as the rest of the country plunged by an average 13.7 per cent. Big volume markets like NSW fell 11.1 per cent, Victoria by 25.6 per cent and Queensland by 8.9 per cent.

The irony in the car industry now is that at a time when buyer confidence is quickly returning, new vehicle supply is very tight.

Buyers are now being forced to wait many months for deliveries on popular models as manufacturers in Japan, Korea and Europe struggle to cope with a global shortage of semi-conductors, one of the key electronic components in modern vehicles.

Many large-scale factories, such as the giant VW factory in Wolfsburg, Germany, which at its peak cranks out one Golf, or a model based on the Golf, every 16 seconds, were forced to wind back production during the COVID-affected 2020.

Now they are back up to maximum again, but struggling to access the volume of chips needed to support full production with the company's chief executive describing the situation as "tense".

Smartphones and other popular consumer goods are competitors with the car industry in the computer chip market.

Canberra's best-selling vehicles in May: