THE $170 million port facility expansion at Port Kembla was trumpeted by the State Government as the end of car import operations in Sydney.

But weeks after the last car carrier delivered its cargo to Glebe Island amid much pomp and ceremony, cars are still pouring into the car terminal at neighbouring White Bay.

Every day hundreds of imported vehicles are being trucked in from Port Kembla to White Bay for storage and distribution.

The terminal has become a holding and processing area for the tens of thousands of cars that are sold in car yards across the Sydney metropolitan area, requiring scores of truck movements through the city.

This contradicts the recent promise by the Minister for Ports, Joe Tripodi, that the new Port Kembla facility would mean car importers could send cars "directly from the port to their final port of sale rather than having to send them first to a separate processing facility".

The situation also raises questions about the Government claim - made by the former planning minister Frank Sartor in 2005 - that the move would take 110,000 truck trips off roads in central Sydney.

"The Government's claim that the Port Kembla development would move trucks out of Sydney has been shown to be a joke," the NSW Opposition spokesman for ports and roads, Duncan Gay, said.

"You've also got to ask how it is going to be a better deal for consumers. Before we had one truck trip when the cars were taken from White Bay to the dealer. Now we've got a truck movement into the city and another movement out. The end person who will suffer is the person who buys the motor vehicle; [the costs] get passed on to the purchaser."

A spokesman for Mr Tripodi said car sale yards and distribution centres were running out of storage space because the car industry was facing "large build-ups in inventory due to the slowing of the Australian economy".

"Glebe Island and White Bay are being made available to the car industry to help store cars ordered during better economic times."