China monthly auto sales overtake U.S. for 1st time

China overtook the U.S. in monthly vehicle sales in January for the first time, figures from China's auto industry association showed Tuesday, largely because of a plunge in American car sales.

If China can outpace the United States in sales for all of 2009, it will become the world's largest vehicle market.

The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said Tuesday that 735,000 vehicles were sold in China in January. That surpasses the 656,976 vehicles sold in the U.S. the same month.

China zoomed past Japan to become the world's second-biggest auto market in 2006. With 1.3 billion people, China's climb to the top position is viewed by most in the industry as inevitable.

Plunging U.S. sales appear to have accelerated the ascent.

While car sales have slowed in China amid the economic downturn, U.S. sales tumbled 37 per cent in January to a 26-year low. In China, vehicle sales fell 14.4 per cent from a monthly record 860,000 in January 2008, the Chinese industry group's statistics show.

January sales were 0.8 per cent below those in December, and below the 790,000 some analysts had anticipated.

Last week, Mike DiGiovanni, General Motors Corp.'s executive director of global market and industry analysis, projected that Chinese auto sales could hit 10.7 million vehicles in 2009, more than his estimate of 9.8 million unit sales in the U.S. this year. Autodata Corp. forecasts 2009 U.S. sales at 9.57 million.

Last year, Canadian auto sales bucked the trend in the United States. As late as October, Canadian sales of light vehicles were up 1.5 per cent compared with the same month last year.

But since then, Canadian sales have declined steadily.

Sales in Canada dipped in January, with many manufacturers reporting weak results — notably General Motors of Canada Ltd., which said Tuesday that its monthly sales dropped more than 46 per cent from last year. Overall, 76,850 new cars were sold in Canada in January — a 25.3 per cent drop from January 2008 sales.