VietNamNet Bridge – The car sales have increased slightly after automobile manufacturers launched a series of new models. However, high hopes would be put in the last two months of the year.

Car demand still high

After the five-month decrease period, automobile joint ventures have seen the sales increasing slightly since June.

Reports showed that 5858 cars were sold in June, an increase of 2 percent over the previous month. Meanwhile, the July sales increased by 15 percent over June.

The sales improvement has brought high hopes to automobile manufacturers, who were put on tenterhooks in the first six months of the year when seeing the car sales prices drop dramatically. The number of cars sold in September rose to 7669 cars, an increase of 600 cars in comparison with August.

Of these, the members of the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (VAMA) sold 7018 cars, up by nine percent over August. Especially, SUV and PC series both witnessed the two-digit growth rates of 15 and 24 percent, respectively.

Yoshihisa Maruta, General Director of Vietnam Automobile Corporation, said 2012 is really a difficult year for auto manufacturers with the economic recession in Vietnam and the world, the consequences of the natural calamities in Japan and Thailand.

However, he believes that the demand would increase in the time to come, and that despite the current bad situation, the Vietnamese market still can see great potentials.

The personal vehicle ownership proportion in Vietnam is now lower than the average level in the region. There are 80-140 cars per 1000 people in Indonesia, Malaysia or Thailand, while the proportion is 18 per 1000 people in Vietnam, which is equal to Thailand’s 15 years ago.

Laurent Charpentier, General Director of Ford Vietnam, also said he believes the car demand in Vietnam is still high, and that Ford Vietnam reaffirms its commitments on long term investment plans in Vietnam and the launching of new products.

Horst J. Herdtle, CEO of BMW Euro Auto, said the marketed new models have helped the company maintain the two digit growth rate, adding that the news about the best business results would come in early 2013.

Gearing up in the sprint race

Believing that the market would warm up in the last months of the year, automobile manufacturers have been launching a lot of new car models.

The “trump cards” of the manufacturers were all displayed at the Vietnam Motor Show 2012 Exhibition held in September. Most recently, BMW Euro Auto, the importer of BMW car, introduced BMW X3 xDrive with N20 engine and BMW TwinPower Turbo technology. The model is believed to bring the high sales to BMW Euro Auto in the year-end sale season.

Not only having launched new models, automobile manufacturers have been trying to attract customers with noisy sales promotion campaigns.

Toyota Motor Vietnam has been expanding its network of sales agents, branches and HEADs in some provinces and cities.

Honda, in its strategy to develop the sales agent network, plans to open one more sales agent by the end of the year. It is also considering joining forces with commercial banks to run the promotion program under which people can borrow money to buy Honda’s products at the zero interest rate.

BMW Euro Auto has decided to cooperate with Fusion Maia on providing Premium Card to the clients who want to possess Series 7 models. Ford Vientam has lowered the sale prices of Fiesta, Mondeo, Escape, Everest, Focus series by 15-35 million dong.

Tran Thuy