IF you think there's a lot more traffic on the roads these days, you're right. Singapore's passenger car population has just crossed the half-million mark. And the fastest-growing brand this year is not a big player like Toyota or Honda but the little Suzuki.

According to Land Transport Authority statistics, the car population - that is, private cars plus rental cars but minus taxis - broke through 500,000 in August. And at end-August, there were about 502,000 cars in Singapore.

By end-September, the car population had grown to 504,483. And the total vehicle population, which includes other vehicles such as taxis, buses, goods vehicles and motorcycles and scooters, was 837,844.

This means that in the first nine months of this year, the car population has grown 6.8 per cent. There were 472,308 cars at end-2006. And that figure was a huge jump from a decade earlier. At end-1996 there were just 365,558 cars on the roads - about 100,000 units less or only around three-quarters of the 2006 population.

But more interesting is the breakdown of passenger cars by brand today.

It is common knowledge that Toyota is Singapore's best-selling brand, so it comes as no surprise that at the end of last month, a total of 143,829 cars with a Toyota or Lexus badge were plying Singapore roads, or 28.75 per cent of the total population. This represents growth of 5.9 per cent since December 2006 (see table).

Nissan and Honda are also popular brands, so the former is No 2 with 64,669 units, for a 12.8 per cent market share, and the latter is No 3 and very close behind with 63,596 units, or 12.6 per cent market share.

But because Honda recently became No 2 in terms of new car sales for both its authorised distributor and parallel importers, it is also no surprise that the population of Honda cars caught up significantly with the Nissan population in the first nine months of 2007.

During this period, Honda chalked up growth of 18.23 per cent while Nissan shrank 0.36 per cent.

However, the biggest revelation has to be Suzuki. From January to September this year, the population of cars bearing the red 'S' badge jumped a whopping 28.02 per cent to 10,499.

The Suzuki population appears to have been boosted by the popularity of its Swift model.

In fact, among best-selling parallel imported brands, Suzuki is No 3 after market leader Toyota and Honda.

As for the overall car population, it has been steadily increasing because the government has allowed it to. The certificate of entitlement, or COE, quota has been raised each year since 2002, in line with the stated aim to move away from ownership taxes to usage charges.

The population figures were also lifted in the past half year by fewer deregistrations, as the scrap rebate is less attractive for cars registered from May 2002.