Domestic car sales in the first two months of this year totaled 74,901 units, a 7.5 percent increase from the same period last year, supported by local dealers’ promotion campaigns, local online market researcher U-Car said in a report on Thursday last week, citing data compiled by local motor vehicle branches.
Sales for the first two months are reported together to factor out the effects of the Lunar New Year holiday, a nearly one-week slowdown that occurs at different times during the period each year. The holiday this year started on Feb. 15, but last year began on Jan. 27.
Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), which sells Toyota and Lexus vehicles in Taiwan, maintained its top position by selling 21,803 units in January and last month, up 5 percent from the period a year earlier, the report said.
However, Hotai’s share in the domestic market over the period fell to 29.1 percent from 29.8 percent, it added.
China Motor Corp (中華汽車), which sells Mitsubishi sedans and its own-brand CMC commercial vehicles, reported sales of 8,782 units, a 13.9 percent increase on an annual basis, it said, adding that the firm was the second-largest car vendor in the nation with a market share of 11.7 percent.
Bucking the upward trend, Yulon Nissan Motor Co (裕隆日產), which supplies Nissan and Infiniti cars in the domestic market, saw its vehicle sales fall 18.8 percent annually to 6,443 units, with an 8.6 percent share, it said.
Honda Taiwan Co (台灣本田), the fourth-biggest domestic car distributor, reported that sales grew 21.9 percent year-on-year to 6,395 cars for a 8.5 percent share, the report said.
Local car dealers generally delivered positive business outlooks for the whole of this year, despite a higher comparison base last year.
Hotai executives last month forecast that 440,000 new cars would be sold in Taiwan this year, slightly down from last year’s 444,669 cars, while Yulon Group (裕隆集團), the parent group of China Motor and Yulon Nissan, also predicted that new car sales would reach 440,000 units.
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