Japan New Car Sales Up First Time in 14 Months

Japan’s October 2011 new car sales showed an increase of 25% over the previous year, when including sales of both regular passenger and kei cars.

Among the individual manufacturers, Toyota saw a 20.4% rise, and Honda an increase of 19.4%. The kei segment produced the greatest increase with an overall gain of 28.3% with Daihatsu’s new Mira e:S propelling the company to a 29.9% increase over the same time last year.

It is important to bear in mind in all this that September 2010 was the last month that the Japanese government’s EcoCar incentive applied, prompting a slump in October 2010 sales – but particularly hitting Toyota and Honda, whose hybrid cars had seen most benefit from this subsidy.

So the baseline for this month’s YOY growth figures is the very low stats set last October. In this light, Toyota and Honda’s seeming “rebound” does not seem so remarkable. And in contrast, Daihatsu’s performance is absolutely superlative since it was not as dependent on the EcoCar incentive in the first place, so its almost 30% gain in sales is a genuine leap.

The figures also show that the supply chain has now recovered from the effects of March’s earthquake. The only cloud on the horizon now is the production lost as a result of the recent flooding in Thailand.

Source: Nikkei