Vietnam News Network

Car sales continued to drop in September with only 5,180 units sold, a significant decrease of 2,629 units from August 2008.

The sales report by VAMA also showed that in September 2008 only one manufacturer, Toyota Vietnam, had sales of over 1,000 cars, while six months ago, five manufacturers had sales of over 1,000 units.

However, Toyota Vietnam’s sales proved to also be unsatisfactory, as it only sold 1,226 cars in September 2008, a figure that is 300 units lower than the sales of the Innova model alone six months ago.

Vinamotor had the second highest number of sales in September, with 771 units sold, followed by Vidamco (GM-Daewoo) with 601 units, and domestic owned Truong Hai with 566 units sold.

The figures showed that the decrease in purchasing power of local manufacturers over the last month occurred to both commercial vehicles and cars.

Most noteworthy is that most of the preferred models saw a sharp decrease in sales. The Honda Civic, which always led in terms of turnover, saw the dramatic decrease of 75% over the previous month, with only 121 being sold in September compared to 484 units in August.

The Toyota Innova also saw sales cut in half over the previous month, from 1,374 units in August to 650 in September.

The question that has been raised is that if the car purchasing power has bottomed out, when will the purchasing power recover?