AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)06/04 Report--

In the past two years, with the continuous improvement of Japanese brands in the Chinese market, more and more car companies have launched more competitive models one after another. following the continued hot sales of the Honda Civic in China, Dongfeng Honda recently launched a hatchback version of the Civic model, hoping to consolidate its dominant position in the Chinese market. According to the latest news, Dongfeng Honda hatchback version Civic has recently accepted the reservation.

From an exposed Dongfeng Honda promotion shows that the Dongfeng Honda Civic version of the hatchback can use a deposit to deduct some of the later models, but did not release specific price information. It is reported that the new car is not expected to hit the market until late July this year.

In fact, since the current Dongfeng Honda hatchback version of the Civic went public, it has been in a state of hot sales, despite the previous experience of the "oil gate" incident, but it does not seem to have much impact on Honda, as the incident is gradually dealt with, sales are back to their peak.

So in this environment, driven by popular models such as the Civic, Honda achieved annual terminal car sales of 1554433 in 2019, an increase of 122142 over the same period last year and an 8.5 per cent increase over the same period last year, setting a record for Honda's annual sales in China. Among them, Dongfeng Honda sold 788916 vehicles in 2019, an increase of 13.2% over the same period last year, making it the most outstanding Japanese brand in China in 2019.

However, in May this year, Dongfeng Honda became the only Japanese brand to decline amid good news from the domestic passenger car market. According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, according to KuaiBao's sales to key enterprises, China's automobile industry is expected to complete 2.136 million vehicles in May, an increase of 3.2 percent from the previous month and 11.7 percent from the same period last year.

So it's surprising that Honda is the only car company to show a decline in sales in such an environment. Toyota sold 166300 vehicles in China in May, up 20.1% from a year earlier, while Nissan sold 130016 vehicles in May, up 6.7% from a year earlier, according to sales of the top four Japanese brands. Even the Mazda brand, which has the most modest performance in China, rose 31.6% to 22886 in May.

From the perspective of Honda's two major channels, Guangzhou Auto Honda sold 68696 vehicles in May, up 0.1% from the same period last year, while Dongfeng Honda terminal sales were 65534, down 3.4% from the same period last year. Dongfeng Honda is obviously more affected by the epidemic this year than Guangzhou Honda. After all, Dongfeng Honda is at the center of the epidemic. However, as the domestic market continues to rise, it also shows that consumer demand is expanding, so we do not know whether Honda's decline is caused by limited production or reduced sales.

It is worth noting that in the environment of Honda's declining sales for several months in a row, it was exposed that the engine stalled due to fuel pump problems, and a total of 396149 models were recalled, covering almost all of Honda's domestic models, including domestic Acura TLX-L, Acura CDX, Acura RDX, Fengfan, Odyssey, Guandao, colorful Intelligence, Feido, Ling Pai, Accord series cars, which shows the great impact.

After all, in that year, Dongfeng Honda suffered from the "oil door" incident that made both Dongfeng Honda Civic and CR-V go through a "ordeal". Among them, the monthly sales of CR-V models were once less than 10,000 vehicles, which also made Dongfeng Honda's overall sales decline of 4.1% in 2018 compared with the same period last year. Dongfeng Automobile Group has been affected, performance has declined.

Therefore, with the upcoming listing and pre-sale of the hatchback Civic, it is expected whether it can help Dongfeng Honda achieve a certain increase in sales. After all, the continuous Civic model, which is more "authentic", has been deeply concerned by consumers since the news came out. But in terms of Honda's performance this year, whether it can maintain last year's performance is still a question.

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