Our patent-pending China sales oracle has spoken, and it says. The only bubbles in China are in the heads of some self-styled experts.
Looking at the June and half year results of GM China, one can only conclude that all is well in the Middle Kingdom. What’s good for GM China is good for America: China is GM’s largest market. GM’s sales in China are up 9.9 percent in June and 5.3 percent for the half year. But there is a much more important lesson:
Shanghai GM’s June sales are up a whopping 41.4 percent from a red-hot June 2010. In the first half of the year, sales of Shanghai GM were up 25 percent. As mentioned ad nauseam by yours truly, what is dragging the GM numbers down (but not out) are Wuling and FAW-GM, which suffer from a very soft commercial vehicle market.
| June ’11 | June ’10 | Change | YTD | Change | |
| Shanghai GM | 101,524 | 71,782 | 41.4% | 600,002 | 25.00% |
| Chevrolet | 51,312 | 38,304 | 34.0% | 297,841 | 14.50% |
| Buick | 54,140 | 36,486 | 48.4% | 324,919 | 28.20% |
| Cadillac | 2,722 | 1,812 | 50.2% | 14,078 | 88.30% |
| Wuling | 88,027 | 99,115 | -11.2% | 641,324 | -5.40% |
| FAW-GM | 4,327 | 5,220 | -17.1% | 30,332 | -38.80% |
| All GM JV | 193,878 | 176,486 | 9.9% | 1,273,502 | 5.30% |
Kudos where kudos are due: GM is receptive to the criticisms from us and other media and is no longer spinning negative numbers. This time, GM could say “SAIC-GM-Wuling’s sales decreased 11.2 percent to 88,027 units” and the sky did not fall. One number is missing, that of FAW-GM, we calculated that (marked grey) by using the difference of the reported total and the reported sales of the other JVs.
From what I had been hearing from other manufacturers, the passenger vehicle market in China is fine, it is the commercial vehicles that are taking a breather after massive subsidies last year.
The year-to-date numbers are all as reported. Left-brainiacs may note a difference of 1,844 between the reported total of 1,273,502 units and the sum of all JVs.
Imported Opels perhaps?
The more cars GM can sell, the more money they can invest in R&D which benefits us all
Yeah
Don’t hold your breath. US carmakers don’t do that. I present you the case of Ford. Which is more profitable than Toyota while selling two million less vehicles and employing 2-3 times more people in the US while paying those people more and giving their executives the highest salaries in the industry. Guess where they scrimp?
So as the photo shows, Shanghai GM’s cars are actually badged as “Shanghai GM”, not just Buicks or Chevrolets and such? Interesting!
Some vehicles do get the badge but not all the vehicles are badged Shanghai GM, and all of them also have their own brand badges. If you wanna see go visit Shanghai, these cars are the most popular ones there by far, with only the old VW Santana taxis rivaling them for popularity. It’s very much a Shanghai GM town, sort of like China’s Detroit, except not run down with a falling population but a city in it’s growing supermegatropolis heyday. The only downside of visiting Shanghai is that if you’re a man and you go out at night you’ll probably be approached repeatedly by pimps or whatever who will constantly try and convince you to go take a look at their girls no matter how many times you tell them to go away.
I was in Shanghai a month ago, and it looked to me like the undisputed popularity of the Buick (aside from, of course, the preposterously ubiquitous VW Santana) is under threat by ever-growing numbers of locally built black Audi A6L sedans.
It was very interesting to see how city-specific the car markets were during my trip. Shanghai’s car market is very much unlike Beijing’s which is rather unlike Shenzhen’s.
Sales of Chevy’s, Buick’s and Cadillac’s are much more profitable for GM than the Wuling vans. GM would rather sell one Buick/Chevy than 2 wuling vans. Good to see them more than make up for the lost sales by Wuling. GM IMO is starting to realize that volume is not everything.
GM China is up 67500 units for the first half of the year, of which Shangai GM is up 150,000 units.Also US sales at 1,261,600 are neck and neck with China sales of 1,273,502
Sooooo, now it is ” What is good for China, Is good for GM?”