February Sales Records Fall in Mexico

Although February’s selling pace slowed slightly for the second month in a row, dealers nevertheless delivered a record 110,612 cars and trucks, erasing the prior February peak of 97,409 units set only last year.

Sales of 4,809 units daily in February trailed the prior month’s 4,984 units by 3.5%, but rose 13.5% from the prior year’s 97,409 deliveries to reach a ninth consecutive monthly record. Only May 2015 interrupted the market’s string of monthly sales records stretching back through March 2014.

Cars, alone, set an all-time February high of 71,012 units, surpassing the 64,875 posted in like-2015, but trailed January’s 75,646 units by 2.0%.

Garnering increasing favor with Mexican consumers, light trucks also posted a February benchmark of 39,600 units that eclipsed the prior record of 37,362 set in 2008. They too trailed the January performance by 6.0%, but topped like-2015’s fifth-place finish by 21.78%.

LV sales in the first two months of the year total 230,236 units, 14.5% more than the 201,011 vehicles delivered last year.

With sales up 24.2% for the period, light trucks now account for 36.3% of 2016 LV sales, up from 33.5% a year earlier.

Unlike other markets, “Dieselgate” so far appears to have had negligible impact on the third-ranked Volkswagen-brand sales in Mexico, up 9.7% for the year, although like other volume brands it has seen its market share slip a bit to 15.6% from 16.3% year-ago as lower-volume names have made inroads.

Sales of market-leading Nissan-brand LVs are up 12.3% year-to-date, but its share too has fallen 25.7% from 26.2%, while second-place Chevy’s market share has declined to 15.3% from 17.2%, despite a 1.2% uptick in volume.

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