New vehicle sales in Taiwan contracted 16.4 percent sequentially to 35,412 units, but marked the strongest August performance in about 18 years, with many local consumers no longer viewing car purchases during Ghost Month to be a taboo issue, government statistics showed yesterday.
The monthly decline was much milder compared with the 35 percent slump during the Ghost Month of July 2019. As the COVID-19 pandemic has severely delayed car production and delivery in the past few years due to component supply constraints, it became less of a concern for local car distributors to launch new models, market researcher U-Car said yesterday.
On an annual basis, car sales rose 2.9 percent, helping to boost the total new vehicle sales during the first eight months to 312,637 units, growing 13.4 percent from the same period last year.
Photo: Amy Yang, Taipei Times
“Even though Ghost Month arrived in August, new car sales still showed strong momentum. That indicates that local consumers have changed their mindset,” said Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), which distributes Toyota and Lexus cars in Taiwan.
Hotai expects the momentum to sustain this month with, new car sales to rise slightly to about 36,000 units, given lingering influence of Ghost Month and macroeconomic uncertainty worldwide.
Additionally, numbers of new models are to hit the market, which would help fuel car sales, Hotai said.
New Lexus LM, a people carrier, Mercedes-Benz GLC Coupe, Mazda3, Porsche Caynne and MG ZS are to arrive later this month, it said.
Last month, Hotai sold 11,710 new Toyota and Lexus vehicles combined, slumping 29 percent from July, or an annual growth of 14.2 percent. That brought down Hotai’s market share to about 33 percent last month, from 39 percent in July.
Honda Taiwan Co (台灣本田) advanced to the second place last month with new vehicle sales surging 26.5 percent month-on-month, or up 5.3 percent annually, to 2,170 units in August, from No. 7 in July.
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