New car sales slump in Japan

While Audi celebrate a record 500,000 worldwide sales in a half year period and Australian’s stockpile fairy bread in anticipation of the ‘1,000,000 sales in a calendar year’ record being reached in December, its all looking a little bleak for Japan.

Ironically Japan, the home of the world’s largest and most successful car manufacturer Toyota is experiencing a significant downturn in car sales. Car sales for the last six months in Japan have dropped by 10 percent to a 30-year low of only 1,788,440… Even at that rate it makes you wonder where they put them all on that little island.

According to Japan’s Automobile Dealers Association they last experienced a slump of this magnitude back in 1977 and that was probably because 1970’s Japanese cars were with few exceptions, rubbish.

While sales of large cars are under pressure (though recovering somewhat) in Australia it is the small car segment that is being hit the hardest in Japan. It seems that small is just too big as Japanese punters continue to snap up Micro cars (really small…small cars) and small car sales falter dropping some 15.1 percent.

Nissan has reported a decline in sales of 13.2 percent, Honda are crying poor with a 5.6 percent drop and the mighty Toyota saw sales slip by 10.9 percent on the home front, which they no doubt made up by selling more cars to the rest of the world. It’s tough at the top…

Source : GoAuto