The market for domestic passenger car sales in China continues its decline in 2019 with 8 consecutive months of declines from July 2018 to February 2019. With two months of double digit declines in January (-16,7%) and February (-17,6%), the market doesn’t seem able to recover soon. However, there’s a silver lining to this apparent malaise, as these numbers reflect wholesale data. Retail sales of new light vehicles dipped just 4% in January, which means the big drop in wholesale deliveries was a result of a reduction in dumping excess inventories by carmakers on their dealerships. [Read more…]
After looking at the 
After looking at the 
European sales of passenger cars in January increased 6,5% in January 2018 to 1,27 million, which marks the fourth consecutive year of January sales growth, with sales up 40% on the 908.000 sales in January 2013. As sales of car models (hatchbacks, sedans, staton wagons, coupes and convertibles) were stable at +2%, MPVs continued thier sharp decline as crossovers and SUVs are taking over the European streets. MPVs declined 19% to just 7,7% of the market (a new low) while crossovers increased 24% to take 34% of the market, a new high as their share was below 30% for the 2017 full year.
Sales of domestic passenger cars in China beat all expectations for January 2018 with an 11% increase to 2,4 million sales. Analysts and experts had expected a slow start of the year as the tax cut on cars with engines of 1,6 liters or less had ended. However, January 2017 was an exceptionally slow month with stable sales on the same month in 2016 while February last year suddenly showed 20% growth on the year before. This phenomenon was due to the Chinese New Year celebrations last year falling in January, as opposed to February in 2016 and 2018. This means that next month is likely to balance off the January performance with stable sales or perhaps even a small decline. This is also reflected in the Seasonally Adjusted Annualized selling Rate which is down by 1 million on January 2017 at 24,74 million. We’ll need to analylse combined January and February figures to be able to draw a thorough conclusion of the state of the Chinese auto market. 
Baojun has launched a second new model in six months time and this 510 crossover is one of its best looking designs, especially from the front, with its squinting headlights that are visually connected to the grille by a chrome line. The sharp crease running from headlight to taillight and through the door handles makes for an attractive side design, together with the floating roof and the squared off wheel arches, although it should ride a bit lower to reduce the huge gap between the wheels and the arches.. Surprisingly, while a lot of these characteristics are familiar from other brands (Citroën, DS, Suzuki, Range Rover), the combination still looks like an original design. In the interior Baojun also shows it’s one of the more mature brands among domestics, with attractive design: an 8-inch screen on top of the center console in Mercedes-Benz style, Mini-style toggle switches underneath it and lots of “metal” frames. 
After discussing 
The European car market continues its steady growth in 2017 as almost 1,2 million passenger cars were sold in January, an increase of 9,6% on the previous year and a 16% increase on 2015. Some of this gain can be attributed to additional business days so we’ll have to wait until the February data is published to see how the market develops at the start of 2017. On a positive note, 21 out of the 30 countries show double digit gains, including 4 out of the 5 major markets: Spain (+10,7%), France (+10,6%), Germany (+10,5%) and Italy (+10,1%) while the UK market grew at a more modest rate of +2.9%. Only 3 countries showed declines: Switzerland (-3,7%), Ireland (-1,8%) and Slovakia (-1,2%). Big loser of 2016 The Netherlands rebounds to become the big winner with sales up 27,1%.