Asian car manufacturers have been enjoying much success for the past months. Whether in production or in sales, they have been doing better than their counterparts who are based in the US. In fact, these Asian car makers are expected to combine for more than half of the US market share some time later this year. With problem after problem plaguing the US based auto manufacturers, Asian car makers look like they might do just that. Honda is one of the more prominent car manufacturers from Asia that has had good success doing business in the United States and everywhere else.
Recently, the Japanese car maker announced their automobile production, domestic sales, and export figures for the first month of 2007. Honda made a good start this year by posting record figures for sales, production, and export. Both the domestic and overseas production of Honda has increased their overall production figure for the past month which is surely higher than the same period last year. This is the nineteenth month that Honda has broken their production record for the past year. The momentum started back in August of 2005 and it looks as if the trend will not be changing in the near future, thanks to their lineup of cars that has captured the attention and the interest of quite a number of car buyers.
Their production domestically is up by 3.3 percent. They have managed to produce 104,161 units domestically. In their North American plants and those in Asia excluding Japan, they have produced 212,173 units for the past month. This figure is 16.6 percent higher than their output last year for the same period. All in all, Honda’s total production worldwide is 316,334 units which is 11.9 percent higher than January 2006’s production figures.
In North America, their facilities in the United States produced 89,963 units which is an improvement of 10.1 percent over their production in the region in January of last year. In Europe, they managed to produce 18,210 units which is 6.6 percent higher than last year’s January figures. In China, the Japanese car maker made a very large step forward. Their facilities in China produced 35,640 units which is a 69.3 percent increase over January of 2006. This shows that Honda is committed to further increase their brand’s popularity not only in North America but also in other parts of the world.
Domestically, Honda suffered a minor setback in their sales of new vehicles which was down by one percent from last year’s January sales figures. While their total sales in Japan has decreased, their sales of mini-vehicles on their turf increased by .4 percent. This is still good news since mini-vehicle demand is still growing and that is a sign for more sales in the near future. The decrease in their sales for January this year marks only the first time in the last three months since October 2006 while the increase in the sale of mini-vehicles have been steadily increasing for the past three months starting in November of last year.
