Sales slump continues before Bangkok Show

The Thai auto industry will be pinning its hopes on a very successful Bangkok International Motor Show to kick-start sales.

This year started very poorly, with total sales in January falling below the 40k mark with just 38,648 units sold. This has been followed up by a similarly poor February with sales of just 43,605 units.

The poor sales cannot be explained away very easily since over all sales are down by over 27% compared to the same 2-month period last year, this despite aggressive marketing campaigns at the start of the year, and new model introductions.

Top five for February 2007 (Overall sales):

One-ton pick-up truck sales for February 2007:

As is the norm, pickup sales represented the bulk of the unit sales, with 26,682 units. Nissan are enjoying decent success with the Navara and have taken 3rd spot, which is all you could hope for in a Toyota/Isuzu dominated market.

Will the Motor Show boost the market?

There will only be a few new cars launched at the show, and none of them are main-stream enough to command large sales volumes. Toyota will probably enjoy some brisk trade of their fresh 2007 Vios, and this is likely to be the top selling vehicle for the next few months. But will it be enough?