Visitors at a car showroom. — Photo Vietnamplus.vn

After sales grew 13 per cent in September, the car market in Việt Nam was stagnant in October even when producers offered discounts and promotions to stimulate demand.

The Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (VAMA) said its members sold 25,369 units in October, approximating the previous month’s sales (25,375 units) but falling 31 per cent from the same period last year.

They included 19,624 passenger cars, decreasing 0.2 per cent month on month, while the number of commercial vehicles sold increased slightly, by 1 per cent, to 5,604, indicating certain recovery in transportation and business demand, VAMA noted.

During the first ten months of 2023, VAMA members delivered 235,296 units to buyers, down 29 per cent year on year, with passenger cars down 32 per cent, commercial vehicles down 16 per cent, and special purpose ones down 60 per cent, statistics show.

There are also many other brands in the Vietnamese car market such as Audi, Jaguar Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Subaru, Volkswagen and Volvo, but they do not reveal their business results.

Thanh Cong (TC) Group with the brand Hyundai sold 7,458 units last month, raising its 10-month sales to 48,626 units.

In total, VAMA members and TC Group posted sales of 32,827 units in October and 283,922 units during 10 months.

Insiders said though carmakers continuously launched promotions and discounts by tens of millions to almost half a billion đồng in recent months to attract buyers, the market stayed flat last month, failing to meet businesses’ expectations.

Consumers seemed to remain reluctant to make use of the discount race due to economic reasons, they noted, forecasting that the market is unlikely to witness a sudden increase.

This year, it would be hard for the market to match 2022’s sales figure of over 404,000 units. The total sales were estimated at about 70 per cent of that number because economic difficulties were making consumers tighten their belts, insiders predicted.

Honda's motorbike and car sales in Việt Nam both decrease

In contrast to the increasing sales of motorbikes and cars in September, sales of these two segments of Honda Việt Nam decreased by 7.5 per cent and 15.9 per cent respectively last month compared to the previous month.

Honda Việt Nam said that this was the result compiled from car sales and service stores authorised by Honda and Honda automobile distributors delivered to customers.

Accordingly, in the motorbike business, the joint venture sold a total of 180,881 vehicles of all types, down 7.5 per cent month-on-month.

Cumulatively for the 2024 fiscal year (from April this year to March next year), Honda Việt Nam has sales of 1,171,108 motorbikes of all types, down 12.9 per cent compared to the same period of the last fiscal year.

In addition to serving domestic consumption, Honda Vietnam also exported 18,452 complete motorbikes to many different markets.

Similar to the motorbike business, in the car business, Honda Việt Nam had total sales of 2,148 vehicles last month, down 15.9 per cent compared to the previous month.

Among automobile products, Honda City continued to be the best-selling car model of this joint venture with sales of 751 cars, followed by Honda CR-V with 477 cars.

The new rookie joining the MPV segment, Honda BR-V, ranked third with 468 cars delivered to consumers.

Cumulatively in the fiscal year ending April 2024, Honda Việt Nam has auto sales reaching 12,850 vehicles of all types, falling by 27.3 per cent from the same period last financial year. — VNS