Sales of GM’s minivan joint venture top 1 million units in 2009
With sales up nearly 60 percent year-on-year in the first 11 months, SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co. announced last week it has become the first Chinese automaker to sell 1 million vehicles in a single calendar year.
The company is a 50-34-16 joint venture between Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp., General Motors and Liuzhou Wuling Motors.
As China's largest mini-commercial vehicle maker, SGMW builds and sells Wuling-badged mini-trucks and minivans. It also assembles the Chevrolet Spark small car.
The Wuling brand is also the first domestic vehicle nameplate to achieve annual sales of 1 million units, said GM China in a statement.
SGMW attributes its record sales to the existing government polices encouraging rural residents to buy energy efficient mini-commercial vehicles.
Earlier this month, GM and SAIC announced the plan to establish a joint venture in India to introduce small cars from Shanghai GM and mini-commercial vehicles from SGMW into India.
SGMW is located in Liuzhou of southwest China's Guangxi region. It also has a second manufacturing facility in Qingdao of east China's Shandong province. Its sales in China in 2008 were 647,296 units.
