Handbrake: Honda production grinds to a halt in December

Mehran leaps ahead of Corolla as the highest selling car for second straight month.


Faseeh Mangi January 11, 2012

KARACHI:


Honda’s operations almost ground to a halt in December as the company failed to manufacture a single car in its workshops owing to unavailability of parts.


Honda Atlas Cars has been facing problems in its supply chain since October because of floods in Thailand from where the company imports parts and then assembles them.

There is no drop in orders, clarified a Honda official who requested anonymity while adding that the halt in sales will be followed by a boost.

Bookings have continued to pile up at the front offices, it’s just the back end workshops that have witnessed a slump, official added.

Sales declined by a substantial 92% to just 71 cars against 897 cars sold in November, according to data released by Pakistan Automotive Manufacturers Association.

Meanwhile, Suzuki Mehran with sales of 2,880 units in December stayed ahead of Toyota Corolla’s sales of 2,153 units to mark itself as the country’s highest selling car for the second straight month.

Cumulative wagon in
cruise control


Car sales grew by 20% during July to December 2011 on reduced taxes, higher farm income and lower base effect.

Sales stood at 71,886 units in the first six months of fiscal 2012 against 59,646 units sold in the same period of the preceding year.

The yellow cab scheme announced by the Punjab government also played its due role in this volumetric growth, said Topline Securities analyst Nauman Khan.

For a second month in a row, Suzuki Mehran stayed ahead of Toyota Corolla to hold the reign of being the highest selling car in the country.

Pak Suzuki Motor Company, the country’s largest automobile assembler, showed a robust growth of 38% primarily due to higher sales of Mehran and Bolan. The two witnessed an extra demand on account of taxi scheme launched by Punjab government.

On the other hand, Indus Motors sales grew by 1% with company’s flag ship product Corolla depicting the same growth trend.

Despite launch of new variants by the company in 1,600cc segment and CNG vehicles, corolla sales showed meagre trend. Hilux, under the pick-up segment, led the growth in sales of the company with a gigantic 195% to 2,162 units against 732 units in same period last year.

Cuore, the dying breed of the company, was the only vehicle whose sales experienced a substantial decline of 36% to 1,884 units against sales of 2,959 units in same period last year.

The company announced earlier that manufacturing of Coure would stop before June.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 12th, 2012.

COMMENTS (5)

Umar | 12 years ago | Reply

Over all car sales are up by 20%, good sign, parts shortage for Japanese cars is a problem in N America as well. Japanese have centralized production facilities and parts are shipped to various assembly plants from there. In N America shortage for Japanese car makers is due to Japan Earth Quake. Pakistan is not alone with that problem. All facilities that assemble Japanese cars are experiencing these problems.

Syed | 12 years ago | Reply

@saeed

Criticism is different from discouragement. Fahim only criticizes the current situation but he's never claimed that the future will be worse.

As for nuclear assets, in the entire human history only two nuclear bombs have been used (Hiroshima/Nagasaki). Pakistan today has enough nuclear bombs to blow up the whole world and despite of this it is adding a dozen or so more nuclear warheads every year (fastest expansion in the world). What does this show other than a paranoid feeling of insecurity?

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