China continues to grow with offshore brands increasing their share of the market – with government-mandated partners, though.
During February wholesale deliveries in China of cars, multipurpose, and sport utility vehicles jumped to 1.31 million units in February, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said today. Passenger car sales in rose 18%, while total sales, adding buses and trucks, also climbed 18% to 1.6 million units last month. Year-to-date deliveries are up 11% to 3.75 million units.
Against this backdrop, particularly strong were the performances of General Motors and Ford Motor during February.
General Motors and its joint ventures sold 257,770 vehicles in China during February, setting a new record for the month. Sales increased 19.9% from 215,070 vehicles sold in the same month last year. GM’s domestic sales during the first two months of 2014 totaled 605,831 units – an increase of 15.2% from the year-ago period, also a new record.
Ford China increase sales by 67% in February, with 73,040 vehicles sold. Ford China’s sales are up 59% so far for the year, with sales of 167,506 vehicles compared to the first two months of 2013. Total passenger car sales for Ford China, which include a couple of thousand imported cars rose 88% in February with 56,284 vehicles sold compared to 29,950 in February 2013. Ford has sold 128,882 passenger cars so far in 2014, up 73% from 74,389 vehicles sold during the same period last year.
Toyota and Honda sales in China jumped 43% and 28%, respectively, last month. Both companies were suffering from an ethnic backlash and sales boycott triggered by a dispute between China and Japan over ownership of some islands in the East China Sea that boiled over in 2012. Japanese makers were forced to cut production by roughly 50% at the height of the tensions.
Because of the strong growth by offshore brands, sales of domestic Chinese brands are declining. In January, the sales of German cars, American cars, Japanese cars, Korean cars and French cars respectively accounted for 28.6%, 16.7%, 14.7%, 11.3% and 5% of the total sales of cars.
