#NewVehicleSales

It’s official: China’s Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) announced that in 2010, Chinese bought 18,061,900 vehicles, an increase of 32.37 percent over 2009. Automobile production rose to 18,264,700 units, an increase of 32.44 percent.

As predicted several times, China handily broke the world record of annual sales, established by the U.S.A. way back in 2000 with sales of 17.4 million units.

New car sales around the world are mostly rebounding – except in the markets where they had been artificially stimulated last year. This list will be continuously updated as new data becomes available.

Scotia Bank in Toronto has an insightful and resourceful car analyst, Carlos Gomes. Whatever he writes is worth reading. He expects car sales to rise and the “United States and the euro zone to climb out of their deep hole.” He also expects that the developed nations are ripe to be plucked and eaten by an upstart, roughhewn crowd:

“In 2011, new car sales in China and the other BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) will surpass the combined volumes of Western Europe and Japan, and account for roughly 30 per cent of global car sales.”

Here is his case:

German new car sales pierced the previous year line for the first time this year. In December, Germans bought 6.9 percent more cars than in December 2010. However, this is more due to a moderate December 2009 than to an overly strong December 2010. For the year, German new car sales are 23.4 percent below 2009.

“Hyundai Motor Co. and its affiliate Kia Motors Corp. sold a combined 1.1 million vehicles in China last year, becoming the second largest auto seller in Asia’s biggest car market, the companies said yesterday.”

This today in the Korea JoongAng Daily, and in case you’ve never heard of them, they are an associate of the Herald Tribune. Now why should this be a slap in the face of GM?

Edmunds expects December car sales to be the highest of any month of this year. They figure that approximately 1,127,000 units will have changed hands when the month ends. This represents a 10.2 percent increase from December 2009 and a 30.4 percent increase from November 2010. Why?

As far as total sales go, India is no China. 1.43 million units were sold on the subcontinent last year, a bit more than a tenth the cars the Chinese had consumed in the same year. But India is revving up quickly.

“The next 24 months will be tough for us,” said Soh Weiming, Volkswagen’s company’s executive president for China, to Bloomberg. Is Volkswagen running scared in China? Will the bubble finally burst? Soh Weiming is worried.

Data coming in from their 8,900 reporting dealers throughout the United States prompt J.D. Power to predict a strong new car December. “It appears that 2010 will end on a high note,” said Jeff Schuster, executive director of global forecasting at J.D. Power and Associates.

With the effects of the various scrapping incentives across Europe slowly working themselves out of the system, the worst appears to be over in Europe. According to the official numbers of the ACEA, registrations of new cars across the EU27 fell by 7.1 percent to 1,069,268 units in November. However, this November is above the 904,577 units sold in November 2008. From January to November, a total of 12,349,743 new cars were registered, or 5.7 percent less than over the same period of 2009. All in all, Europe seems to have weathered the carpocalypse much better than the New Country.

Last year in October, I predicted that China would overtake the U.S. in car sales in 2009. The comments could not haven been more uncomplimentary. By the end of 2009, China did beat the U.S. 13.6 to 10.4.

A while ago, I cautiously predicted that this year, China would break the U.S. all time record from the year 2000. The comments were far less incredulous this time around, the discussion instead turned into the tired fascist elephants against communist donkeys discourse. Now it is official what the attentive TTAC reader has known all along: China will break the current record of 17.4 million units from 2000 in the U.S.

Passenger car sales in China jumped 29.3 in November as people rushed to lock in incentives set to expire at the end of the year. Demand will most likely be even stronger in December. In November, the end of the incentives was just a rumor. A few days ago, the end of government handouts became official, and dealers already ran out of cars.

Domestic car sales in India rose 21 percent from a year earlier in November. India is no China yet. But as its per capita GDP has crossed the magical $1000, car sales are waking up with a vengeance. This is one rule I learned in this business, and it never fails. China has more than three times the per capita GDP of India, and you know what kind of a run that caused.

We’ve been following the race for the #1 luxury brand in the U.S.A. for quite a while with rapt attention, and have been predicting all along that it will come down to the wire. It looks even more so after dissecting the November numbers. Or rather after leaving the dissecting to Bloomberg.