FAW Group vehicle sales top 444,000 in Q1

Shanghai, April 15 (Gasgoo.com) FAW Group Corp, one of the largest Chinese automakers, said yesterday that it sold 179,461 vehicles in March, up 37% year-on-year and 24,461 units more than planned. This brought FAW's vehicle sales in the first quarter to 444,112 units.

The company's sales division said that sedan sales for the month stood at 135,969 units, up 33.7% from a year earlier. Sales of medium- and heavy-duty trucks rose by 58.1% to 30,659 units, with light-duty truck sales up 38.7% at 11,884 units.

In the first three months, FAW Group had auto sales growth of 35.4% year-on-year at 444,112 units -- nearing the sales volume of the first four months of 2007 -- with sedan sales up 36.5% at 368,224 units. Sales of medium- and heavy-duty trucks grew 38.7% to 53,222 units.

FAW VW, its 50-50 sedan joint venture with Volkswagen AG, sold around 144,852 cars in the first quarter, up 48.7% from a year earlier and reaching 26.3% of the sales target of 2008.

FAW Toyota, FAW's joint venture with Toyota, sold 95,000 sedans from January to March, surging by 74.4% year-on-year and finishing 21.8% of the whole year's sales target.

In addition, the sales of vehicles built by FAW's other joint ventures such as FAW Xiali and FAW-Hongta also saw growth in the first quarter.