New vehicle sales in Taiwan rose by 4.0% to 43,056 in July from 41,392 units a year earlier, according to local reports citing company data, while month-on-month the market was up by almost 14%.
Demand rose ahead of the 'ghost' month, which this year runs between 11 August and 9 September. During this month, the seventh month of the lunar calendar, Taiwanese tend to refrain from making major purchases as it is thought to bring bad luck.
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Vehicle imports rose by 17% year-on-year to 19,110 units last month and by 14.5% month-on-month, while year-to-date they were up by 11.8% at 115,611 units.
The overall market in the first seven months of 2018 was 2.6% higher at 265,250 units compared with 258,554 units in the same period of last year.
Hotai Motor, the local distributor of Toyota, Lexus and Hino vehicles, saw its sales rise by 11.4% year-on-year to 13,733 units last month, but were up by less than 1% at 76,047 units year-to-date.
Mitsubishi distributor China Motor Corporation saw its sales rise by 4.6% year-on-year to 5,009 units last month and by 1.7% to 30,565 units year-to-date.
Yulon Nissan's sales plunged by almost 41% to 2,601 units last month and by over 19% to 21,499 units year-to-date, which it blamed on model changeovers.
Honda by contrast saw its sales jump by 11.6% to 3,973 units last month and by over 30% to 24,505 units year-to-date, thanks to strong demand for the locally-made CR-V and HR-V models.
