Um, General Chinese Motors?

GM’s huge post-bailout investments in China bear fruit.
China is still rocking, GM announced today, unlike the US where GM’s vehicles sales fell 1.3% in 2016, with cars down 4.3% and trucks, including SUVs, flat. It joined Ford, Fiat-Chrysler, Toyota, BMW, and other automakers in the US that had booked their first annual vehicle sales declines since 2009.
But that’s not what is happening in China. China became the largest new vehicle market in the world for the first time in 2009 with growth rates that made global automakers and their financiers salivate. But these phenomenal growth rates ran aground in early and mid-2015, and sales began to fall on a year-over-year basis. The government ignored the debacle for a while, then stepped in with incentives, and the race began anew.
So today GM announced that its deliveries of new passenger vehicles – cars, light trucks, SUVs, and MPVs (multi-purpose vehicle) – in China grew 7.1% in 2016 to 3.87 million vehicles.
This compares to its US sales, which fell 1.3% to 3.04 million vehicles. So GM sold 27% more vehicles in China than in the US. The gap is likely to grow further.

This post was published at Wolf Street by Wolf Richter ‘ Jan 5, 2017.