Ford is expected to overtake its Japanese rivals in China as Toyota and Honda Motor struggle to regain market share after a territorial dispute that led to anti-Japanese sentiment there a year ago.
For much of the past decade, Reuters noted in a report, Ford has languished some way behind Japanese brands and Hyundai and well behind General Motors and Volkswagen which are both long established in China.
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Ford was late into China and its subsequent, conservative approach is also to blame, the news agency said.
But it appears likely to sell more vehicles in China than Toyota and Honda and its China sales are also come close to Nissan’s.
Ford is likely to sell more than 900,000 vehicles, including passenger cars and commercial vehicles, in China this year thanks to its expanded product lineup, a company official told Reuters. New in the showroom since last year are a couple of small SUVs and the redesigned Focus.
It has also just launched the redesigned Mondeo, China’s version of the US Fusion.
The automaker sold 551,738 vehicles during the first eight months of the year, up 50%.
“We should be able to sell more than 900,000 vehicles, possibly close to a million in China this year,” the Ford official said.
Toyota is targeting to sell about 900,000 vehicles and Honda about 750,000. China-based spokespeople at the two firms told Reuters they were on track to meet those objectives.
Nissan is aiming to sell 1.25m vehicles but a company executive last month said the company was “stretching to achieve” that goal.
In contrast, GM, through various joint ventures, expects to sell more than 3m vehicles in China this year, up 8% to 10% over last year’s 2.84m.
According to consulting firm LMC Automotive, the Volkswagen group is forecast to sell about 3.2m vehicles this year in China, up from 2.8m in 2012.
LMC said Hyundai Group’s sales in China this year should reach 1.64m, up from 1.4m.
During the first nine months of this year, Toyota sold a total of about 636,700 vehicles, down 0.5%, Honda sold 497,261 vehicles, up 5.8%, and Nissan sold 885,700 vehicles, up 0.2%, Reuters said.
Since Ford began an aggressive push to overhaul and beef up its product lineup for China over the past two years, “sales have been growing in leaps and bounds”, Yale Zhang, head of Shanghai-based consulting firm Automotive Foresight, told the news agency.
That momentum should not only remain intact for the rest of this year but should become “even stronger” next year and beyond, Zhang said, adding Ford expected to start production at a major assembly plant in the eastern city of Hangzhou around 2015.
