Volkswagen’s China Sales Beats 2008 Record

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Oct. 13 – German automaker, Volkswagen (VW), announced that sales in the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong from January to September has already topped last year’s sales record.

“We surpassed the one million record sales landmark of last year already in middle of September,” Winfried Vahland, president and chief executive of Volkswagen Group China, said in the statement. “Based on our current figures we expect for the whole year a solid double-digit growth of more than 30 percent for the group.”

During the period, 1.06 million VW cars were sold in the country, a rise of 37 percent compared to the same period last year. September sales figures alone broke monthly records with almost 150,000 cars sold. Last year, a total of 1.02 million VW cars were sold.

The company expects this year’s total sales to be more than 30 percent higher. VW is one of the early entrants to the Chinese market and sells cars in the country through joint ventures with First Automobile Works and Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC).

Under its current partnership with SAIC, the Volkswagen and the Skoda brands are manufactured along with the Volkswagen Santana, Santana Vista, Passat, Polo, Touran, Lavida and Skoda Octavia. VW plans to sell two million cars in China by 2018.

The company’s robust sales clearly benefited from Beijing’s strategy to  spur domestic consumption through tax cuts and subsidies although it is uncertain whether the country will be able to sustain this type of growth when the effects of the stimulus plan taper off.