Sales of new cars in China rose 3.7% year-over-year in April, the slowest rate in more than two years. The demand for new cars is cooling as economic growth slows. In the first quarter of 2015, gross domestic product (GDP) rose by 7.0%, compared with estimates of 7.3%.
Chinese car buyers purchased 1.67 million cars in April, according to a report from the Chinese Association of Automobile Manufacturers, cited at The Wall Street Journal. Total first-quarter sales came in at 6.27 million light vehicles, according to data from focus2move.
In the first quarter, Volkswagen remained the share leader with 13.8% of the Chinese market, up 2.4% year-over-year. Yet the biggest quarterly gains were posted by domestic makers Great Wall Motors, up 109.5%, and ChangAn, up 19.8%.
And where did most of those gains come from? Sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and mini-vans, what else? And sales from domestic automakers grew in the first quarter and continued growing in April, at the expense of foreign makers like VW, Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) and General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM).
The best-selling vehicle in the first quarter was the Wuling Hongguang mini-van, produced by a consortium including GM, Wuling and SAIC. Total sales topped 189,000. Great Wall Motors’ best-selling vehicle was the Haval H6 compact SUV, which sold 87,749 units in the first quarter, a year-over-year increase of more than 29%.
The Wall Street Journal noted that April sales for U.S. makers Ford and GM were flat and down 1%, respectively. Foreign carmakers’ sales were down 3% year-over-year in April, which analysts have attributed to the rise in sales of the lower cost Chinese-made SUVs and vans.
In the first quarter, GM sales improved 6.6% year-over-year and Ford sales rose 3.4%, but combined the two U.S. carmakers sold fewer vehicles than did VW, the market share leader in China.
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