Honda, Mitsubishi make big gains - 2007

[Ahyoo2002]

Business Times - 09 Jan 2008

 

Honda, Mitsubishi make big gains

 

THE Toyota juggernaut continued its reign as the market leader in 2007, but it was Honda and Mitsubishi which made the biggest impact. The latter two marques ended the year by advancing one position up the ranking among members of the Motor Traders Association of Singapore (MTA).

 

Toyota - Japan's biggest carmaker and soon, the world's - accounted for total passenger car sales of 17,121 units last year, including luxury division Lexus. Toyota finished with 15,411 units while Lexus did 1,710 cars.

 

The former was saddled with an ageing model line-up (although Toyota should come back with a bang this year with the new Corolla Altis), while Lexus volume was hurt by the absence of the ES series.

 

The ES was a core Lexus model with a very strong following here before supply of the popular mid-sized saloon stopped in end-2006. It is currently produced only as a left-hand-drive car, and thus cannot be offered in the local market. Otherwise, Lexus sales could easily be 40 per cent higher.

 

A highly competitive market, where main competitors like BMW and Mercedes-Benz had facelifts and a full model change in 2007, also hurt the Japanese luxury marque.

 

Based on an estimated total of 82,094 car registrations by MTA members, the market share for Toyo-ta/Lexus was 21 per cent, which means one out of every five new cars bought was a Toyota or Lexus.

 

This ratio has slipped from a year ago, though. Then, Singapore's No 1 marque accounted for one out of four new cars.

 

But Honda and Mitsubishi had no such problems. Honda moved up one notch in the MTA rankings to become Singapore's second most popular marque with a record 12,205 units, displacing Nissan's 9,608 and relegating it to No 3 overall. This means that from 2006 to 2007, Honda and Nissan switched places in the MTA pecking order.

 

Mitsubishi also had a good year with 8,169 units to take up the No 4 position among MTA members.

 

The Japanese brand also did a switcheroo with Hyundai and its 5,389 units, advancing up one position, while the Korean carmaker retreated one position to No 5.

 

However, Hyundai recorded a great year of taxi sales and if these cabs had been added, it would have revealed a final tally of 8,080 units.

 

MTA's estimated total of 82,094 registrations in 2007 is a 16.8 per cent drop from the 98,729 registrations in 2006. This is due to two factors - the fall in the total number of new cars registered in Singapore, and the sharp rise in market share of parallel importers, or those who are not authorised dealers.

 

A total of about 107,000 new cars were registered last year, compared with around 117,000 the previous year, or an 8.5 per cent reduction.