China’s Top-10 Best-Selling Auto Makers See Rankings Shift

TOKYO – A quick glance at passenger-car sales in China for the first nine months of 2006 reveals some significant shifting in the rankings.

Shanghai General Motors Automotive Co. Ltd. continued to maintain its No.1 position among the country’s top-10 best-selling auto makers, with sales through September rising 30.9% to 295,800 units.

Next is Shanghai Volkswagen Automotive Co. Ltd., with a 20.5% rise to 249,800 units and FAW-Volkswagen Automotive Co. Ltd., up 26.4% to 246,900.

Making an impressive leap this year, Chery Automobile Co. Ltd. pushed Beijing Hyundai Motor Co. Ltd. aside for fourth place from seventh in like-2005, with sales surging 59% to 212,500.

Tianjin FAW Toyota Motor Co. Ltd. saw deliveries jump 79.3% to 169,300, while Geely Automobile Co. Ltd. posted a 44.6% rise to 145,000 sales, marking its first time in China’s top 10.

“I was particularly impressed by Toyota’s sharp rise and the sales surge by Chery and Geely,” says Tomoo Marukawa, an associate professor at the University of Tokyo who makes regular reporting trips to check on China’s automotive industry.

During a trip last year, he visited both Chery and Geely plants, talked with their managers and concluded Chery is the most advanced among smaller Chinese car makers, which ranks as faint praise.

Both auto makers depend on local parts makers and suffer quality problems that cannot be quickly or easily fixed.

“Chery executives know their quality is inadequate,” Marukawa says. “Any exports to the U.S. will be essentially only a trial and test. It will be 10 to 15 years before quality will be good enough for Chery to compete in the U.S. market, and “Geely’s quality is even worse.”