Summary: Chinese sales of domestically manufactured foreign brand automobiles in January

According to statistics released by Gasgoo.com (Chinese), a total of 1.48 million Chinese-manufactured passenger automobiles were sold in January. The figure represents year-on-year sales growth of 53.1 percent. In particular, sales of domestically made foreign brand models begun to show signs of recovery last month following a poor showing in the fourth quarter of last year. 972,100 Chinese made foreign brand vehicles were sold in January. However, their year-on-year growth rate of 45 percent was far under the 71.4 percent growth rate achieved by own brand manufacturers during the over period of time.

Most interestingly, January marked the first month since the outburst of the Diaoyu Island controversy that sales growth of domestically made Japanese vehicles recovered into the positive digits. It was only three months before that that growth rate was at a low of negative 58.5 percent.

Nissan remained the top selling Japanese manufacturer of Chinese-made vehicles in January, having sold a total of 67,000 vehicles. However, it was also the only major Japanese manufacturer to report negative year-on-year sales growth during the month. By comparison, Toyota and Honda's sold 59,000 vehicles and 44,000 vehicles, equivalent to year-on-year sales growth of 17 percent and 19.7 percent, respectively. Suzuki, Mazda and Mitsubishi also all recorded positive year-on-year growth rates.

Despite their recent recovery, German, American, Korean and French manufacturers still surpassed Japanese ones in January sales growth ratings for Chinese manufactured passenger automobiles. Korean and German manufacturers' rates were especially high, finishing at 66.4 percent and 65.1 percent, respectively.

Volkswagen's performance in January was particularly noteworthy. A total of 300,700 Chinese-made VWs were sold over the course of the month, marking a new record for the manufacturer. One of its joint ventures, FAW-VW, saw its sales nearly double last month, while the other, Shanghai VW, was the month's top seller of passenger automobiles in the country.