Newly produced cars are parked at a port in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, April 1, 2010. (Photo : Reuters)
Both Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. enjoyed high sales gains recently and outperformed industry market leaders General Motors and Volkswagen.
Toyota, with its two local joint-venture partners, sold 100,600 cars in China last month, with about 42 percent year-on-year increase, its highest since Feb. 2014.
Honda is not far behind, with increase of 26 percent year-on-year, based on 73,381 units sold last month.
Nissan has low sales of only 0.1 percent last month with 93,600 units.
Toyota spokesman Takanori Yokoi cited on Wednesday that "technical" reasons were somehow responsible for the rise, as the automaker's sales went down in the same month last year while it rendered the older version of its Corolla compact obsolete, to give way for the newer model.
It is still a positive gain for the Chinese auto industry, which has seen a major slowdown in sales as the economy was at its slowest pace in 25 years.
Total sales of passenger and commercial vehicles fell 0.4 percent year-on-year to 1.9 million vehicles in May, said the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM).
Toyota has sold 512,800 cars during the first half of 2015, up 10 percent from the same period in 2014, putting it back on track to meet the 2015 sales target of selling 1.1 million vehicles in China.
Honda also enjoyed a good bounce back in the first six months, selling 460,901 units, almost 30 percent sales, while Nissan sold 587,900 units in the first half of 2015.
Nissan says it is still bound to meet its annual sales target of 1.3 million units.
There is still no update on June sales report coming from market leaders General Motors and Volkswagen, but they have been seen struggling to maintain grown in the past months.
General Motors, Volkswagen and Ford Motor Co. have cut down prices to help maintain their sales growth.
The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers cited in March that it might not be possible to reach last year's 6.9-percent growth in overall sales.
