AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)10/27 Report--

Entering the fourth quarter of 2020, the sales data of imported car brands in the first three quarters have also been officially announced. affected by the epidemic at home and abroad, imported car sales in the first three quarters are still in a large decline, only two brands achieve year-on-year growth. Data show that from January to September this year, terminal sales of imported passenger cars in China totaled 698000, down 16.2 percent from the same period last year, narrowing the decline from the previous two quarters. It is reported that this group of data contains data on normal official imports and parallel imports.

From the analysis of the brand structure of imported cars, the overall pattern is stable, and the top three remain unchanged, namely Lexus, Mercedes-Benz and BMW. Among them, Lexus remained strong, with the number of imported cars growing in the first half of 2020, while the Mercedes-Benz brand became a regular brand, while other brands declined.

Lexus, the best-selling import brand in China, occupies the peak of the domestic import market with sales of 162000 vehicles this year, maintaining a strong momentum in 2019, with an increase of 12.3% in the first three quarters compared with the same period last year. This is also due to the fact that Lexus has been selling imported cars in the Chinese market and insisting on not producing them domestically. This makes the price of Lexus models generally high and does not participate in the price reduction competition in the domestic market, but its imported car status continues to attract some consumers.

As the three best-selling brands in the domestic luxury market, the BBA brand is obviously different in terms of imported models. Except that none of the three brands sell as much as the Lexus brand, Audi also lags behind Porsche and Toyota in the sales of imported models. Among them, Mercedes-Benz narrowly surpassed the BMW brand and regained the second place in the first three quarters, becoming the only two brands to achieve growth, an increase of 7% over the same period last year. It is worth mentioning that in the first six months, the BMW brand still took the lead.

It is not difficult to see that BMW became one of the few brands to decline in the performance of luxury imported brands in September, while Mercedes-Benz became the most obvious growing brand, surpassing BMW and helping brands move up the rankings throughout the year. It is understood that at present, BMW mainly sells imported models including 7-Series, X5, X6 and so on, while Mercedes-Benz imported models include GLE, GLS, S-Class and G-Class models.

Although Audi's brand status lags behind that of BMW and Mercedes-Benz, it still exists as a first-tier luxury brand in the Chinese market. Apart from lagging behind the previous two, import sales in the first three quarters also underperformed Porsche and Toyota brands this year, with the A7, A8 and Q7 and Q8 selling 37000 vehicles in the first three quarters, a sharp drop of 22.7 per cent from a year earlier.

Porsche ranks fourth in the number of imported cars, making China the largest single market for Porsche brands. Data show that Porsche imported a total of 62500 cars from January to September, down 3.1% from a year earlier, making it the smaller decline in imported models.

Toyota ranked fifth in imported car sales in China, with a total of 53200 imported cars in the first three quarters, down 13.1 per cent from a year earlier. The official imported cars of Toyota brand are mainly Elfa and Wilfa models, while the rest of the sales are mainly contributed by parallel imported models.

Land Rover ranked seventh with 24900 vehicles, with sales falling 17.8% in the first three quarters, while imported car sales of Lincoln and Volkswagen fell more than 40%. The decline in Lincoln's imported car sales is related to the brand's domestication, which accounts for an increase in domestic car sales, while Volkswagen's imported car sales decline is partly due to country 6 emissions.

In addition, according to the China Automobile Circulation Association, from January to September this year, imported passenger car sales are still dominated by cars and SUV, accounting for 95.8%, with cars, SUV and MPV falling by 14.9%, 17.5% and 11.3% respectively. In September, the decline in SUV continued to shrink, to 0.8 per cent, and the decline expanded to 3.2 per cent, while cars grew by 1.6 per cent.

In terms of regional structure, the top three provinces in China for sales are still Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu. Among the top 10 provinces in sales, Guangdong, Beijing, Sichuan and Fujian are all in decline. Jiangsu Province is the fastest growing city, up 26.2% from the same period last year.

Judging from the overall sales of imported cars this year, luxury brands are still the main sales force, while the strong market position of Lexus is still strong, and it was greatly affected by the epidemic in the first half of the year. Although luxury imported models recovered obviously in the second half of the year, the performance of the brand for the whole year has not yet become a regular one, which is not as good as that of domestic luxury brands. Although German BMW, Audi and Porsche have been greatly affected, their sales have declined to varying degrees, but their market position and ranking remain unchanged.

Welcome to subscribe to the WeChat public account "Automotive Industry Focus" to get the first-hand insider information on the automotive industry and talk about things in the automotive circle. Welcome to break the news! WeChat ID autoWechat