Severe winter weather in China failed to stop leading automaker FAW Group from posting a big rise in vehicle sales last month.
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FAW sold 166,518 vehicles in January, up 46.9% year-on-year, news agency XFN-Asia reported.
Car sales rose 58.3% to 146,294 units while sales of medium and heavy-duty trucks grew 11.6% to 11,263.
The automaker said that FAW VW, its 50-50 sedan joint venture with Volkswagen, sold 65,709 cars in January, a surge of 104.8% from a year earlier.
Tianjin FAW Toyota Motor, its joint venture with Toyota, said it sold 34,139 cars last year, up 69.8%, according to XFN-Asia.
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By GlobalDataSeparately, a local industry group said total passenger vehicle sales in China soared to a monthly high in Janauary, with the worst winter storms in half a century failing to dampen the country’s increasing love for cars.
Chinese car makers sold 639,000 passenger vehicles, up 32% from the same period in 2006 and 6.7% up from December, according to the China Passenger Car Association.
January sales exceeded those in the previous month for the first time in recent years, despite coming at a time when dealers usually try various measures to reduce stock in hope of boosting sales figures before the year end, it said.
Sedans accounted for three-quarters of the January figure, while sport utility vehicles (SUV) sales jumped 60.5% year on year to 32,000 units, nearly twice as fast as the industry average.
Passenger vehicle production was up 14.5% year on year to 566,000 units. This included 423,000 sedans, 35,000 SUVs and 14,500 mini-vans.
Sales in February, which only has 18 workdays due to the Spring Festival holiday, were likely to be as high as 400,000 units because the freak winter weather had delayed some January deliveries, the association said.
Vehicle production and sales in the country both surged more than 20% to a record 8.8 million units last year, in contrast to weakening sales worldwide.
In total, China, the world’s second largest car market, produced 6.38m passenger vehicles and sold 6.3m units last year.
The association forecasts imported passenger vehicle sales would continue to outpace those of locally-made units this year.
Demand for imported high-end cars would remain strong as they only had a few local rivals. In addition, domestic oil prices were rather low and the country has a growing rank of nouveau riche, it said.
The market for indigenous low-emission cars was weakening domestically, while 81% of imported SUVs and 70% of imported sedans had engines larger than 2.5 litres last year, both up 20% points from a year earlier.
Cold snap slows Chinese automakers’ output
