Summary: Chinese passenger automobile sales in December

Gasgoo.com (Shanghai) - A total of 1.56 million passenger automobiles were sold in China over the month of December, statistics from the China Passenger Car Association revealed. FAW Volkswagen was the month's top selling passenger automobile manufacturer, followed by Shanghai VW, Shanghai GM, Beijing Hyundai, Dongfeng Nissan, BYD, Geely, Changan Ford Mazda, Great Wall and Dongfeng Yueda Kia.

Three domestic own brand manufacturers managed to place in the top ten ranking for the month: BYD, Geely and Great Wall. This is only the second month in the year that three own brands finished among the top ten passenger automobile sellers. Earlier in January Geely, Chery and BYD all ranked in the top ten.

BYD was the best performing own brand manufacturer this year, managing to sell a total of 59,800 automobiles. December marks the first time in a relatively long while that Geely made a good showing, with its monthly sales totaling 54,600 units. Great Wall, which has placed in the monthly top ten ten times this year, sold a total of 51,100 automobiles.

Among the Sino-foreign joint ventures on the list, FAW-VW led the pack with 138,800 sales. Shanghai VW and Shanghai GM sold 122,644 units and 110,135 units in December, ranking as the month's second and third best performing passenger automobile enterprises, respectively.

Despite the fact that December marked the sixth time that FAW-VW led the monthly sales charts, its overall sales result for the year, 1.28 million units, was still behind rival Shanghai GM's 1.33 million sales. Shanghai VW sold a total of 1.25 million vehicles over the course of the year, finishing behind Shanghai GM and FAW-VW.

Beijing Hyundai sold a total of 93,800 vehicles in December. Although the sales result represents a new monthly high for the joint venture, it is still short of the 100,000 sales mark.

Meanwhile, Dongfeng Nissan, which typically places fourth in monthly rankings for passenger automobile sales, was still recovering from consumer backlash following the Diaoyu Island incident, which saw sales of Japanese automobiles fall severely over the last few months of the year. Despite having its traditional position taken by Beijing Hyundai, the fact that Dongfeng Nissan was able to make it into the month's top ten rankings is still a commendable feat, and something none of its fellow Sino-Japanese JVs were able to replicate. The JV's monthly sales have recovered strongly over the fourth quarter of the year, increasing from a low of 46,542 vehicles in September to 70,743 vehicles in December.