General Motors says China sales rose 36.7 pct
Oct. 16, 2006 – By Reuters
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – General Motors Corp., the world’s largest auto maker, said on Monday its vehicle sales in China rose 36.7 percent in the first nine months from a year earlier, and expected sales for all of 2006 to jump 30 percent.
GM sold 645,680 vehicles via its two local ventures in the January-September period, it said in a statement.
“For the year as a whole, GM and our joint ventures are on track to again outpace the market,” it said. “We anticipate annual sales growth of about 30 percent.”
GM’s January-September China sales growth outpaced the 28.7 percent reported by top European auto maker Volkswagen AG last week, its main competitor in China.
But it underperformed relatively later foreign comers in China. Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp. and Ford Motor Co. for instance, more than doubled their vehicle sales in China in the first nine months of this year, they said last week.
One of GM’s ventures, SAIC-GM-Wuling’s sales rose 39.3 percent year-on-year to 346,078 units. It sold nearly 215,000 units of its most popular vehicle, the Wuling Sunshine minivan.
This was a primary factor behind the Wuling brand’s growth of 38.7 percent and behind SAIC-GM-Wuling’s remaining China’s number one producer of mini-vehicles.
The other venture, Shanghai GM, saw sales increase 33.4 percent from a year earlier to 296,658 units in the first three quarters, it said. Sales of Buick and Chevrolet products — including the Spark mini-car — grew 27.8 percent and 51 percent year on year, respectively.
On top of these, Cadillac luxury brand sales also increased by 27 percent, it said, but gave no detailed figures.
Reuters 2006
