All brands reported increases as the unit posted its best October since 2001.
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Ford Motor Co.’s 13.4% growth in sales, which excludes heavy trucks, came in slightly muted from Edmunds.com’s expectations for 14.2% growth. Sales of the Excelle GT more than doubled last month from a year earlier.
Nissan, the biggest Japanese auto maker by sales in China, would sell 1-million passenger vehicles a year for the first time in the country as it sees a recovery in demand, the company’s head of Chinese operations, Jun Seki, said last month. Overall sales of Nissan crossovers, trucks and SUVs rose 26% for an October record as Rogue sales shot up 70% and the Murano crossover jumped 25%.
Automakers are reporting the best two-month stretch of US sales in 15 years, another sign that the nation’s economy is improving.
At a seasonally adjusted annualized rate, October sales were 18.24 million vehicles, according to Autodata Corp, which is the highest October level since 2001, when automakers offered zero percent financing in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the company said. The result marks the brand’s best-ever monthly sales result.
China has presented a many different strong policies, including reducing the sales tax to 5 percent on autos with 1.6-liter engines or smaller, to support vehicle sales. Compact sport-utilities are expected to hit their third month as the top segment with 40% growth.
“Exploding popularity” of small utility vehicles means small and midsize cars are losing market share, Kelley Blue Book said.
Through October, GM says its retail sales in China are up 2.9 percent year-over-year to a record almost 2.82 million vehicles. Personal incomes also barely rose that month. Industrywide light-vehicle sales rose 14 percent to 1.46 million, exceeding the average estimate of 1.41 million.
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October could be the last month Volkswagen’s Audi sales remain untainted. On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency slapped additional Clean Air Act violations on the German auto maker, widening the scandal to thousands of more diesel-powered vehicles, including multiple Audi models. Toyota, with the smallest of those projected gains at 8.5 percent, said that its sales rose 13 percent with SUV sales rising 20 percent at the namesake brand and 34 percent at the luxury Lexus division.
