Japan's new vehicle market continued to decline sharply in December 2019, by 11% to 344,875 units from 387,525 units a year earlier, according to registration data released by the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association.
A significant decline had been largely anticipated for the fourth quarter of last year in the wake of the well signalled hike in the general sales tax rate from 8% to 10% at the beginning of October.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
Government data showed economic growth remained reasonably buoyant in the first nine months of last year with third quarter GDP growth estimated at 1.7% year on year – helped inevitably by strong domestic consumption ahead of the sales tax hike.
The sharp market decline in the fourth quarter dragged full year sales down by 1.5% to 5,195,216 units from 5,272,067 units in 2018.
Sales of passenger cars fell by 2.1% to 4,301,091 units while truck volume rose by 1.5% to 880,539 units and bus sales dropped by just under 1% to 13,586 units.
Toyota's sales rose by 2.5% to 1,547,173 units in 2019 after declining by 5% in the previous year while second placed Honda's sales declined by 3.4% to 722,075 units; Suzuki 696,014 (-2.6%); Daihatsu 658,849 units (+1.9%); Nissan 567,643 units (-7.9%); and Mazda 203,580 units (-7.8%).
