Domestic sales of light vehicles are down, exports are up, while production is little changed. These are the key trends in recent months to emerge from the latest survey of the Mexican market by the country’s sector body AMIA.
The 1.28m vehicles sold in the year to November represented a 6.7% fall on the year-ago period. Made-in-Mexico cars accounted for 36% of the sales and imported vehicles 64%. In November, sales were 133,800, a decline of 5.4% year-on-year (y/y).
Car makers in Mexico produced 3.67m vehicles between January and November, virtually unchanged on the corresponding period of 2017. However, in November output slipped 1.3% to 345,000.
[mpu_ad]Overall, exports went up 6.3% y/y to 3.17m light vehicles, though November’s shipments of 290,000 abroad were a 0.2% decrease on the year-ago month.
The US accounted for 74% of Mexico’s light vehicle exports from January to November at 2.35m (up 9.3% y/y). Canada was next with a 7.4% share and 234,000 vehicles sold (down 7.3% y/y), and Germany third at 4.4% with sales of 141,000 (up 61.3% y/y).
In November, the US had a 78.8% share with 229,000 sales of Mexico-made light vehicles (up 22.4% y/y), Canada a 5.6% share with 16,300 (down 51.3% y/y) and Germany a 4.4% share with 12,800 (up 17.6% y/y).
