The nation’s new car sales jumped 13.03 percent year-on-year to 40,705 units for a second month last month during the year-end peak season, with imported brands again making up more than half of overall car sales.
Sales of imported brands constituted 51.2 percent of overall new car sales from 45.2 percent a year earlier, surpassing local brands for the second month in a row.
On a monthly basis, car sales slid 0.82 percent from 41,040 vehicles, online market researcher U-Car said in a report on its Web site yesterday.
Last month’s figure brought aggregate new car sales in the first 11 months up 0.2 percent to 393,912 units, from 393,142 units in the same period last year, reversing an annual decline of 1 percent in the first 10 months, the statistics showed.
The market researcher’s report attributed the growth primarily to strong sales of best-sellers, such as the Toyota RAV 4 and the Toyota Corolla Altis, of which 3,531 and 2,902 units were sold last month respectively.
Hotai Motor Co Ltd (和泰汽車), which distributes Toyota and Lexus vehicles, was the biggest beneficiary from the seasonal growth.
The company sold the most vehicles last month at 13,781 units, a huge increase of 44.8 percent year-on-year, the statistics showed.
In the first 11 months, Hotai sold 127,704 vehicles, up 17.7 percent from a year earlier, helping boost its market share to a five-year high of 32.4 percent.
In the luxury vehicle segment, the competition was close.
Hotai sold 2,557 Lexus vehicles, but lost to Mercedes-Benz by a narrow margin of two units, U-Car’s statistics showed.
A total of 2,559 Mercedes-Benz vehicles were sold last month.
Hotai last month raised its sales target by 3 percent to 13,500 units for this year, compared with its earlier estimate of 13,100 units made in September.
The company expected the nation’s car market to grow 2.35 percent to about 435,000 vehicles this year, compared with 425,000 units last year.
Originally, Hotai expected that this year would be flat on an annual basis.
China Motor Corp (中華汽車) ranked as the nation’s second-biggest car distributor in the January-to-November period with a total of 43,388 vehicles sold, including Mitsubishi vehicles, down 4.4 percent annually.
Yulon Nissan Motor Co (裕隆日產) came next with sales growing 3 percent annually to 33,906 units, thanks to its popular Kicks model.
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