China 4 months 2014: VW Santana & Golf biggest gainers in Top20

VW Santana in Kashgar, Xinjiang Uyghur – May 2014

* See the Top 339 All-models ranking by clicking on the title! *

As is the tradition on BSCB, after exploring detailed sales for April and focusing on the all-new models for the month, we now go into the year-to-date charts to try and extract longer-term trends. New locally-produced passenger car sales in China are up 12% so far in 2014 to just under 7 million units. The top of the sales charts is stabilising, with the podium unchanged on the same time last year. In pole position, the Wuling Hongguang is up a very healthy 40% on last year to 270,118 sales, a new record after only 4 months. The VW Lavida for its part is up 24% thanks to the arrival of the ‘Gran Lavida’ hatchback variant to 193,165 units and the Ford Focus is up ‘only’ 6% to 134,509 sales.

Can the VW Golf ever sell more in China than in Europe? Talk about a milestone…

In 4th place the VW Santana is the biggest gainer in the Top 20 thanks to the new model at +125% and 106,494 units. In fact the rest of the Top 7 is 100% Volkswagen, with the German carmaker amazingly placing 5 models inside the 2014 Top 7 so far: the Sagitar is up 14% to 102,010 sales at #5 (helped by a record month in April), the Jetta is up 25% to #6 and the Passat up 13% to #7. The Nissan Sylphy is up a very impressive 31% but remains 9th, while the Haval H6 is up 10 spots and 60% to a splendid 10th place with 94,262 units.

Nissan Teana sales are up 78% so far in 2014.

Further down, the VW Golf is the 2nd biggest gainer in the Top 20 thanks to the 7th generation now widely spread, up 67% to #20 and 61,447 sales vs. #48 over the Full Year 2013. The Chana Honor is up a gargantuan 127% to #21, the Dongfeng Future up 23% to #29, ChangAn Eado up 72% to #31, Ford Kuga up 117% to #35, Citroen C-Elysée up 79% to #40, Nissan Teana up 78% to #47 and the ChangAn CS35 up 73% to #48.

Honda created a new segment with the CRider

No less than 49 all-new models have popped up in the Chinese sales charts over the past 12 months, or 50 depending on which way you look at it… In any case the Honda CRider leads the way among all-new entrants at #28 with 50,224 sales. The Toyota Vios new generation is up… 20578% to #33 and 44,664 units so we may as well consider it as all-new. We then have the Hyundai Mistra at #36, the Ford Mondeo at #51, Chery E3 at #61, Toyota Yaris L at #70, Chery Tiggo 5 at #78, Peugeot 301 at #79, Dongfeng Fengguang at #87, Beijing Auto Weiwang M20 at #90 and Mazda CX-5 at #101.

A more in-depth analysis of the Chinese car market and the relative weakness of local brands based on my recent trip in the country will be published shortly.

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Previous month: China Q1 2014: VW Santana, Haval H6 & Chana Honor biggest gainers

One year ago: China 4 months 2013: Great Wall Haval H6 now best-selling local

Full January-April 2014 Top 339 All-models Ranking Table below.