1.17m vehicles sold in January, early Spring Festival responsible for low sales

Gasgoo.com (Shanghai February 8) - A total of 1.17 million passenger vehicles were sold this January, Caijing reported today, quoting statistics from the China Passenger Car Association. The amount is 17.6 percent lower than December 2011 and 16.5 percent less than January of last year.

1.07 million vehicles were manufactured in January, 21.4 percent lower than in the previous month and 23.7 percent lower than in January 2010. CPCA General Secretary Rao Da believes that the drop in sales is due to the relatively early timing of the Spring Festival holiday this year, and has nothing to do with the automobile industry specifically.

SAIC, with its Shanghai GM, SAIC-GM-Wuling and Shanghai VW brands led the sales charts, with each brand managing sales of 124,000, 110,000 and 95,500 vehicles, respectively.

The CPCA predicts that due to the Spring Festival having finished and February having 21 working days, sales this month should be higher than last February. However it remains to be seen whether or not it will be able to top January's performance.