March Drives Mexico LV Sales to Q1 Record

Mexican light-vehicle dealers scored a perfect first-quarter with record sales of 305,788 units, 9.0% better than the old January-March record of 280,477 deliveries in 2006. It also marked a 21.9% improvement over the 250,775 LVs sold in first-quarter 2014, which ranked only 14^th for the period.

New-car sales powered the industry to the Q1 benchmark with 202,384 deliveries besting by 9.1% the 185,488 cars sold in like-2004.

Totaling 103,404 units, light-truck sales ranked fourth-best behind the record 116,505 vehicles sold in 2004, but surpassed year-ago’s 90,281 units by 26.3%

Mexican dealers in March alone posted a third consecutive monthly sales record with 104,777 LV deliveries, erasing a 9-year-old benchmark of 96,297 units established in 2006.

Compared with the prior year, March sales rose 27.5% based on an average daily selling rate 4,366 on each of 24 selling days vs. 3,423 each of 35 selling days in 2014, when March sales totaled 85,579

The record-setting March performance again was paced by record cars of 68,418 cars that handily surpassed the month’s prior peak of 64,283 set in 2004.

March light-truck sales ran third-best for the month at 36,359 units, 15.1% off the record 41,835 deliveries posted in 2007.

March’s largest year-over-year LV sales percentage gain was 60.2% for low-volume Mitsubishi, while industry-leader Nissan/Infiniti posted a 26.6% increase and second-place General Motors saw a 20.9% gain.

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