Summary: Luxury brands’ performance in the Chinese passenger automobile market in October

Gasgoo.com (Shanghai) - The Chinese luxury automobile market is continuing to grow at a rapid pace in October, with its year-on-year sales growth rate well above the market average. The top three manufacturers, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, have maintained the steady sales growth from the first three quarters of the year. However, sales growth rates for a lot of second-tier luxury automobile manufacturers have started to slip, with Jaguar Land Rover’s sales growth now in the single digits. Although sales of Infiniti and Cadillac are continuing to grow, their growth rates are not nearly as high as they were over the past few months.

Audi, which leads the segment in terms of sales, posted the lowest sales growth rates of the big three manufacturers, with its 17 percent sales growth rate behind the 20.3 percent of BMW and 31.3 percent of Mercedes-Benz. Audi’s sales for the month totaled 48,108 units, ahead of the 39,512 units of BMW and 24,506 of Mercedes-Benz.

Looking at cumulative sales results for the first ten months of the year, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz all managed to post growth rates of over 15 percent. Their sales volumes respectively totaling 463,800 vehicles, 375,400 vehicles and 241,700 vehicles.

While second-tier luxury manufacturers are still performing strongly, their performance is lagging compared to previous months. Jaguar Land Rover is one example, whose sales growth for October was just 3 percent, compared to the 38.7 percent the manufacturer achieved over the first three quarters of the year. Jaguar Land Rover sales in October totaled 7,643 units.

Infiniti and Cadillac also saw their sales growth rates decrease dramatically. The former’s sales fell from over 90 percent over the first three quarters of the year to 48.4 percent in October, while those of the latter fell from over 60 percent to 21.8 percent. The two manufacturers’ October sales totaled 2,895 units and 5,116 units, respectively.

Porsche’s sales in October totaled 3,429 units. The figure represents year-on-year growth of 16.3 percent, which was close to its three quarter sales growth rate of 18.7 percent. Volvo’s sales for the month, meanwhile, increased 36 percent, also close to its three quarter sales growth of 35.8 percent. The two manufacturers sold 3,429 units and 6,917 units over the course of the month, respectively.

However, not all news was gloomy, with the Citroën DS brand managing to set a new monthly sales record in October. The brand’s monthly sales of 3,016 units placed it ahead of Infiniti.