Sri Lanka February 2013: Maruti and Micro on top

The Maruti Alto should be the best-selling car in Sri Lanka

* See the Top 4 best-selling brands by clicking on the title! Many thanks to Andrea *

Latest overall sales figures for Sri Lanka dated back to 2011, but that was up to today because thanks to Andrea I can now share with you for the very first time on BSCB official info by brand for this country. Exciting times! And even better: the data is very recent. In February 2013, Maruti is the most popular carmaker in the country, however with just 145 sales it is down 24% on January and an embarrassing 89% on February 2012. The Sri Lankan car market seems to indeed have taken a pretty harsh beating over the last 12 months.

Sri Lankan ad for the Micro MX7 (aka Geely MK-2)

In 2nd place with 114 sales, down from 293 in January and from 210 in February 2012, we find the Sri Lankan brand Micro, which I will assume is unknown to most of you dear readers. So a little bit of background. Micro was founded in 1995 and has been assembling CKD kits imported from China and South Korea. For a while the main model in the Micro range was the Trend, launched in 2003 which is in fact a Hafei Brio.

Micro Panda

Micro currently sells Geely, Great Wall, Jinbei and SsangYong models as you can see on their website: the MX7 is a Geely MK-2 while the Panda and Panda Cross have kept their Chinese name. We also have the Rexton, Korando, Actyon Sports and Haval H5 while the Great Wall Steed has become the Micro Sports Cab and the Jinbei H2L (aka Toyota Hiace) is assembled and sold as the Micro Tourer.

Other available figures for February 2013 indicate Tata is down 93% year-on-year to 22 registrations and Perodua is down 82% to 69 sales. Overall, Indian vehicles have a 36% market share in Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan cars are at 24% and Malaysian vehicles at 15%. German brands are on the up, now holding 14% of the market, with BMW up a whopping 171% year-on-year in February to 46 units.

Previous post: Sri Lanka: One of the Top 10 ‘Emerging engines of growth’

Full February 2013 Top 4 brands Ranking Table below.