Strong Malibu sales in March helped GM to a small sales gain of 2%.
Ford Motor Co. saw its sales in China, the world’s largest automotive market, drop by 11% during March, while General Motors eked out a 2% gain as its sales continue to grow.
GM, which will now report its China sales quarterly rather than monthly in the future, said its joint ventures in China delivered a March record of 352,346 vehicles. Buick and Cadillac enjoyed record deliveries in March, while Chevrolet grew 35% from a year earlier, GM said.
Sales in the first three months of 2018 increased 8% on an annual basis to 986,052 units.
Overall Ford Motor Co. China sales totaled 83,666 vehicles in March. Lincoln China’s 2018 sales performance continues to grow steadily with March sales up by 27% year-over-year and quarterly sales up by 10 % from the year-ago period.
(China to “significantly lower” tariffs on new vehicles. Click Here for the story.)
Monthly sales for Changan Ford Automobile (CAF) totaled more than 46,000 vehicles, down 22% compared with March last year.
The year-to-date sales for Ford Motor Co. in China totaled more than 207,000 units, a 19% decrease compared with year-to-date figures from 2017 while CAF totaled more than 124,000 vehicles, down 26% compared with the same period in 2017.
(Click Here to see more about Ford and GM’s sales numbers in China.)
Monthly sales of Lincoln reached more than 5,000 vehicles in March, a 27% increase compared to March 2017. The year-to-date sales for Lincoln totaled nearly 13,000 vehicles, a 10 percent increase year over year.
Jiangling Motor Corporation (JMC) sold more than 31,000 vehicles in March, up 5% compared to March 2017. The year-to-date sales for JMC totaled more than 66,000 vehicles, down 6% compared to the same period in 2017.
(To see more about the Chinese government extending EV incentives, Click Here.)
The Volkswagen Group continued on its growth path in China during the first quarter, delivering 1,010,600 new vehicles to customers there in the first quarter of 2018 – an increase of 7.4% of which 358,800 units were delivered in March. Deliveries in the Chinese market grew 10.6% in March, the VW Group said.