Summary: Own brand sedan sales over first seven months of 2012

Gasgoo.com (Shanghai) - Facing increasing competition in the Chinese automobile market, domestic own brand manufacturers are seeing their sedan sales decrease across the board. According to Gasgoo.com (Chinese) statistics, sales of own brand sedans over the first seven months of the year totaled just 1.55 million units, falling 8.3 percent from a year ago. Own brands' performances lag far behind those of rival joint ventures, which now control 74.1 percent of the market for Chinese-made sedans, up four percent from the previous year.

Seven of the ten top performing own brand manufacturers in the sedan market saw their sales totals fall from the first seven months in 2011 to the first seven months of this year. Geely was the top selling own brand sedan manufacturer this year, followed by Chery, BYD, Changan Automobile, Tianjin FAW, Great Wall, SAIC Motor, Brilliance, Lifan and Jianghuai.

Geely's sedan sales grew three percent, allowing it to surpass both Chery and BYD in the overall sales rankings. The Zhejiang-based manufacturer's Emgrand EC7 performed especially strongly, with its sales growing almost 30 percent from 2011 to 2012.

Chery and BYD's sales in the segment respectively fell 10.8 percent and 26.5 percent over the same period of time. The former attributed its decreasing sales volume to its efforts to streamline business operations, while the latter credited its declining performance to a reevaluation of its business strategy this year.

Tianjin FAW, whose sedan sales decreased a full 24.1 percent, was surpassed by Changan, which experienced a year-on-year sales decrease of 'just' 6.3 percent.

Among the bottom five manufacturers, only Great Wall and SAIC managed to maintain positive year-on-year growth rates. Meanwhile, Brilliance, Lifan and JAC all saw their sedan sales decrease, with JAC's plummeting a full 32.1 percent.

The Xiali was the best selling own brand sedan over the first seven months of the year, managing to bring in a total of 94,300 new orders for Tianjin FAW. It was followed by Chery's QQ, Changan's C30, BYD's F3 Sedan, Geely's Emgrand EC7, Changan's Benben Mini, SAIC's Baojun 630, Changhe Suzuki's Landy, Haima's Family and BYD's L3 Sedan.

However, when looking at individual year-on-year growth rates, only the BYD L3, Emgrand EC7 and Landy managed to maintain positive sales growth (the Baojun 630 made its market debut last August, and therefore was excluded from the rankings). Particularly worth mentioning is that the L3's sales over doubled from 2011 to 2012. Growth rates for the EC7 and Landy were all in the double digits.

Sales of the seven other listed sedans all decreased from 2011 to 2012, with sales of the BYD F6 and Benben Mini both falling over 20 percent.