The luxury car brands in China didn’t sell well in the recent months, indicating an abrupt recession in the Chinese car market. Some luxury car 4S shops have been forced by the sales slump to stop restocking and even to apply for shutting down for a period.
According to the statistics of China Passenger Car Association, as one of the most popular luxury car brand Audi went through its first sales slid after 26 consecutive months sales growth. And BMW also experienced it first sales decrease in May from the beginning of this year, with sales decreasing by 5.5% compared with the same period of last year. For Jaguar Land Rover, it was encountered with 32.1% year-on-year sales glide in May. And its accumulative sales from the beginning of the year to May also declined by 23.0% on a year-on-year bases.
Previous, however, the luxury cars in Chinese market were vey hot, with 30% annual average growth in the last decade.
In June, the traditional low season for sales, though most 4S shops has been released a preference of fifteen thousand to more than one hundred thousand CNY, they experienced sales slid. A senior in Chinese car market stated that in June a luxury car brand with more than 100 4S shops in China sold less than 20 units. And he also estimated that 60% of all the 4S shops in China won’t reach 60% of their sales goal in the second quarter of the year, and only several ones can accomplish 80% of their sales goal.
And Lincoln, who entered Chinese market in last year, has set up two 4S shops in June, one of whose sales has declined by about 30% on a month-on-month basis in June. Part of the reason was the increasingly more dealers for China’s limited Lincoln market.
For JLR, as its main force sales, Evoque’s sales didn’t reach the target, and its most profitable Range Rover series lowered much of its selling price, not to mention the cars for sales volume. It is very likely that JLR will be in the red deficit for this year.
In order to gain the bonus from the manufactures to promote sales in the sales slump, some 4S shops even resort to submit a fake sales report. And others even applied for shut down for a period to the automakers.
