China's February Sales: Down For A Change?

Bertel Schmitt
by Bertel Schmitt

The Chinese passenger car market did something highly unusual in February: It declined. If the data of the usually not highly reliable China Passenger Car Association is to be believed, that is. They e-mailed to Automotive News [sub] that February 2011 passenger car sales were a minuscule 0.4 percent below February 2010 levels.

As mentioned before, a decline in February would not surprise us. The reasons are not the oft-cited raise of the sales tax or the raise of gasoline prices. It’s something much simpler: China had been closed for most of February in observance of the Chinese New Year. Seasonally, China gets a spurt of sales before the holidays, and in January, total sales rose 13.81 percent to 1.894 million units.

Anyway, the China Passenger Car Association does not issue the official number. That one comes from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM), and they will report by this week’s end. Their number includes all vehicles. It could even be lower, because the holiday season is not a good season for commercial vehicles. GM China has just been hit by this phenomenon, their sales of Wuling vans dropped 8.3 percent in February.

Honda’s China sales in February were down 6.5 percent, Reuters says.

China’s largest carmaker SAIC reports sales of 283,382 units for February, up 14.3 percent from a year earlier.

Bertel Schmitt
Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

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  • Obbop Obbop on Mar 07, 2011

    Damn. Does this put the kabosh upon our new firm's plans of building and exporting to China our finely-made series of rickshaws?

  • Zackman Zackman on Mar 07, 2011

    Sounds like someone needs to sign up for the "Rent A White Guy" article in the Atlantic Monthly magazine around a year ago to get some more factories built. They are clearly falling behind the times! I nominate Jack, as he would do well, but Bertel is already over there, so, Bertel, you are it! By the way, I have a photo of the three-wheel truck in Okinawa from an ealrier article I'd like to send you, but can't find an e-mail on TTAC to do that.

  • Tekdemon Tekdemon on Mar 08, 2011

    I suspect it has more to do with the fact that Beijing has severely cut down new car registrations, now you have to apply to wait in a lottery, so almost no cars are being added in that area. And right ahead of when they started the new car registration quota, people bum-rushed dealerships to place orders for cars that wouldn't arrive for months and months, so they've basically presold the year's supply of cars for all of Beijing.

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