Prodajni rezultati po razredih za junij in julij.
The small car segment is where the action appears to be at in China, with the price of gasoline recently adjusted to reflect global price fluctuations, the small car market has heated up. Another reason for the rise of small car sales, could be due to the number of Beijing car owners buying a second car with an odd or even number license plate to get around the recent driving restrictions imposed on Beijing for the Olympic games.
The Chevrolet Aveo comes out on top, but sales are down on June, but the Honda City sees its sales practically double in one month. The Chery QQ is down 50%, the VW Polo is down slightly. The new Toyota Yaris was recently introduced into China, and seems to be doing reasonbly well, the previous gernation Yaris did not fair so well in terms of sales.
Oddly, the Citroen C2 does not appear to be performing as well as its brother, the 206. This market segment appears to be evenly spread among domestic, and foreign marques, which is not like any other automotive segment.
SUV sales seem to be slightly down in July 08, the SUV market saw a new entry into the segment from Nissan with their Qashqai, sales of which appear to be strong. The SUV market is the only segment, besides the small car segment, that has Chinese players amongst the top 10. Chery have always managed to claim a top spot with their Chery Tiggo model, despite it being on the market for several years. JAC’s Eagle SUV is a recently launched SUV, based on the body of a previous generation Hyundai Sante Fe, but power derived from the Mitsubishi stable. The Toyota Prado Landcruiser supply line and subsequent sales were most probably affected by the recent earthquake in Sichuan, the Prado is made by FAW-Sichuan, in Sichuan province. The Kia Sportage continues to sell well since swapping to Chinese domestic production rather than being a Korean import, the Sportage is quite a cheap car in China with it starting at 130,00rmb for the base 2wd 2.0l manual model.
In July 2008, the Buick GL8 rules the roost again, 8 years after it was launched in China. The GL8 was refined in 2005, and continues to sell very well, carving its own niche in the premium business MPV market. Poor sales from the Dongfeng-Citroen Picasso are quite shocking, the same for the Kia Carnival.
MPV’s with more than 5 seats are not overly popular for family use, as Chinese families are usually a nuclear family. Most 7 seater and up MPV’s are used for business use. Recently VW and Ford introduced 5 seater versions of their MPV’s, to encourage uptake, as cars with more than 5 seats have to pay double road tax.
Large car sales are still smalle in China, and appear to be dominated by the Americans, Euros, and Japanese marques. Audi claim the top spot with their popular A6 lengthed model, which is a China only model. Recently FAW-Audi produced the 100,000th Audi A6 in China, and they gave it the composer of the Olympic song, Chen Qi Gang.
Overall, it looks like large car sales are down in July 2008 on June 2008, could it be that even the rich are feeling a squeeze in the current economic climate?
The 8th Gen Honda Accord pulled out from behind the Toyota Camry in the past few months to claim top spot in the mid sized car market place, outselling it by almost double. The new Nissan Teana also gained a high place despite only being on the market for a matter of weeks. The Passat continues to sell well, with Volkswagen pretty much having a car in each top sales list, (note - the VW Magotan is mistakenly written as VW Sagitar in the above table).
No domestic maker has any product in the top 10, with this segment of the market being controlled by the foreign marques, although all of the above cars are domestically made via joint venture partnerships with local manufacturers.
It seems that even Roewe and MG did not get enough sales to knock the Audi A4 off even the tenth spot, we hope that can be rectified over the coming months with sales of Roewe 550 and the upcoming MG version.
In July 2008, the mark 2 VW Jetta managed to top the sales chart again, its more of a monthly occurance rather than an actual random occurance. We’re not sure why it manages to top the charts time and time again, although we’re sure its not due to its modern design! The Jetta probably remains popular due to its bombproof mechanicals, cheap cost of running, economy. Its a car that Chinese consumers are well used to, its been in China for over 20 years in its current unshakeable guise, so its no wonder that they are not in any hurry to get rid of them.
Suprises in Julys sales would be the Skoda Octavia - this brand has only been introduced into China for several months, yet its already firing its way up the sales league. The two Elantras are the combined sales of the Elantra, and the facelifted China only Elantra. Further down the list, we have the VW Sagitar, which is the fifth generation of Jetta, but is still outsold by its older brother. The only two domestic players to get their mark into the top sellers list are Chery (with the A5) and BYD (with their F3), both of which are roughly half the cost of their foreign rivals. The Kia Certao high sales position maybe due to their recent launch of the Cerato hatchback (badge engineered Hyundai Elantra).
