Roundup: four Japanese automakers’ China sales through 2019

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Last year, Toyota outsold the other three Japanese automakers in China, and achieved its best-ever China sales as well. Honda also hit an all-time high, while its year-end spurt failed to sustain a positive growth. Nissan said its 2019 sales in China remained flat from 2018. Additionally, after gaining year-on-year increase in November and December, Mazda got its decrease in YTD sales further trimmed.

Toyota

In 2019, Toyota's China market achieved its highest-ever annual sales with approximately 1.62 million new vehicles delivered there, said Toyota Motor (China) Investment Co., Ltd.

Both joint ventures in China boasted year-on-year growth in annual sales. GAC Honda stated its 2019 auto sales jumped 18% to 682,008 units. Notably, its Dec. sales leapt 37% from a year ago to 57,784 units.

(Photo source: GAC Toyota)

The full-year sales of the eight-generation Camry—Toyota's first strategic car model specifically designed for China—hit an all-time high of 185,245 units (+14%). A total of 221,629 Levin cars (+15%) were sold through 2019, of which 20% sales were occupied by the hybrid models.

With 59,461 units sold last year, the C-HR, Toyota's first TNGA-based SUV model, featured an outstanding jump of 162%. The annual sales of the YARiS L family and the all-new Highlander reached 115,124 units (+20%) and 98,506 units respectively. Moreover, the automaker also sold 72,267 units of the Camry Hybrid and the Levin Hybrid in total, a year-on-year increase of 8%.

（Photo source: Toyota China)

FAW-Toyota reported a year-on-year increase of 2% with 737,500 new cars sold in 2019. The annual sales of the Avalon totaled 62,329 units, 20% more than the original target. The Corolla, whose entire model series comes standard with level 2 autonomous driving features, had a sales volume of 357,798 units. Moreover, the joint venture also sold 125,977 RAV4s, 52,989 IZOAs and 35,401 Prados. A total of 4,954 Vellfire Hybrids were sold through 2019.

The premium brand Lexus closed its 2019 with a new record-breaking figure of 200,521 units, 25% more than that of the year-ago period.

Honda

Honda delivered 1,554,433 new vehicles in China throughout 2019, hitting an all-time high in terms of annual sales. Compared to its 2018 performance, the company obtained a growth of 8.5% in the world's largest auto market.

Two joint ventures in China achieved sales rise. GAC Honda saw its retail sales grow 4.1% year on year to 765,517 units, and Dongfeng Honda's full-year deliveries jumped 13.2% to 788,916 units.

(Photo source: Honda)

In 2019, there were seven models—the Civic, the CR-V, the XR-V, the Accord, the Crider, the Vezel and the Fit—whose respective annual deliveries all surpassed 100,000 units.

Nevertheless, in the year-end spurt, Honda failed to maintain the previous prolonged rising momentum. With 142,831 new car delivered in this country, the carmaker was hit by a 25.6% plunge over a year ago in December, the second-time downturn within 2019—the former took place in February due to the Chinese New Year Holiday.

Retailing 67,305 new vehicles, GAC Honda posted a 20.4% year-on-year drop in December. However, the latest decrease didn't prevent the joint venture from achieving its sales goal—735 thousand units, remaining flat from its 2018 deliveries.

Dongfeng Honda delivered 75,526 vehicles in December, a steep decline of 29.6% from the year-ago period. The Wuhan-based joint venture closed its 2019 with 800,000 vehicles produced in total.

Nissan

Nissan's China sales in 2019 basically remained flat over a year ago, outpacing the overall auto market as well.

The PV business arm, including Dongfeng Nissan and Dongfeng Venucia—sold 1,293,086 new vehicles through December, posting a slight drop of 0.6%. Of that, Dongfeng Nissan, selling 1,170,278 units (covering sales of imported Nissan-branded model), attained its best-ever annual figure.

What's more, the light commercial vehicle business unit—Dongfeng Automobile Co.,Ltd (DFAC) and Zhengzhou Nissan—saw its year-to-date sales edge down 1.8% to 213,129 units.

（Dongfeng Nissan)

In December, Nissan said its China sales fall 4.5% from the previous year to 168,262 units, among which 143,616 units (-1.8%) and 19,632 units (-19.6%) were from the PV and CV arms respectively.

Last month, the sales contributors were the seventh-generation ALTIMA (12,280 units), the Sylphy series (61,820 units), the TIIDA (6,269 units), the X-TRAIL (19,028 units), the Kicks (4,381 units) and the Terra (1,807 units). Of those, both the Sylphy and the Terra won their best-ever Dec. sales.

Mazda

Mazda Motor (China) Co., Ltd. said its new car retail sales in December, 2019 reached 24,492 units, of which FAW Mazda and Changan Mazda contributed 10,418 units and 14,074 units respectively.

Based on the year-ago figure, the Japanese automaker saw its China deliveries jump 19.2%, the second month in a row achieving year-on-year double-digit growth.

Full-year deliveries of Mazda's China market amounted to 227,750 units, falling 16.4% compared with the year of 2018.

（Photo source: FAW Mazda)

Both joint ventures maintained an upward momentum in Dec. sales. FAW Mazda posted a year-on-year increase of 22.5%, and gained growth for three straight months. Retailing 91,416 new cars through 2019, the joint venture still faced a decline of 16.1%.

Changan Mazda's deliveries grew 16.9% from the prior-year period in December, but its full-year sales slid 16.5% to 136,334 units. Last month, 10,956 consumers took delivery of the Mazda3 Axela, a surge of 35.4%. Moreover, the deliveries of the Mazda CX-5 edged up 3% over a year ago to 2,990 units, making its 2019 sales total 35,620 units.