Summary: International manufacturers' sales of Chinese made passenger vehicles in 2011

Gasgoo.com (Shanghai) - The top 15 international manufacturers managed to sell a total of 8.36 million domestically produced passenger vehicles in China in 2011, the latest statistics collected by the China Passenger Car Association and compiled by Gasgoo.com (Chinese) show. The figure is a full 11.7 percent higher than the 7.48 million units sold in 2010, which in turn is 31.3 percent higher than the 5.69 million sold the year before that.

Volkswagen AG (including sales from the VW, Audi and Skoda brands) led the sales charts for domestically manufactured vehicles in 2011 with over 2.2 million units sold. The amount is a full 17.6 percent higher than the amount the manufacturer sold the previous year. VW was followed by General Motors (whose sales include the Buick, Chevrolet and Cadillac brands), who sold a total of 1.25 million vehicles in the country, 15.2 percent higher than the amount sold in 2010.

VW and GM are still the only two manufacturers to have broken the million sales barrier in China. The big three Japanese manufacturers Nissan, Toyota and Honda, and two Korean giants Hyundai and Kia, followed close behind. Nissan placed number three last year at 832,200 units, growing 22.1 percent from 2010. Kia's sales also showed a noticeable increase of 29.9 percent from the previous year.

Lotus, PSA, Suzuki, Hyundai, Ford and Toyota's sales also increased from 2010. Lotus' year-on-year growth was just over ten percent, while PSA and Suzuki (via their respective Chinese joint ventures, Dongfeng PSA, Changan Suzuki and Changhe Suzuki) managed growth rates of around eight percent. Hyundai and Ford's growth rates were around five percent, while Toyota's sales increased only 3.7 percent from 2010.

Although Toyota's growth rates were very low, they still managed to trump Japanese rivals Honda, Mazda and Mitsubishi, whose overall sales all fell last year. Combined sales of Honda's two joint ventures, Dongfeng Honda and Guangqi Honda, fell 8.3 percent. Meanwhile, Mazda, via the FAW Car and Changan Ford Mazda ventures, saw its Chinese sales fall 7.0 percent. Sales of Mitsubishis, via the Changfeng and Soueast enterprises, fell ten percent.

By comparison, the luxury manufacturers, BMW and Daimler, witnessed rapid sales increases of over 50 percent in 2011. Daimler, via the Beijing Benz and Fujian Daimler joint ventures, saw its sales increase 51.2 percent. BMW, meanwhile, witnessed a sales increase of 57 percent last year.