Suzuki Overtakes Honda in Japanese Car Market

For the first time ever, Suzuki is in third place in the Japanese domestic automotive market trailing behind Toyota and Nissan, overtaking Honda – for combined sales of light commercial vehicles and passenger cars.

As per the financial daily Nikkei Shimbun, Suzuki sold 587,874 passenger cars and commercial vehicles, behind Toyota (1,417,984) and Nissan (670,096) and ahead of Honda (581,249) and Daihatsu (524,381) between January and October 2006.

So what made this possible? Despite the Japanese econominc recovery, regular car sales are going down. However it is interesting to note that there is a boom of mini car or kei car in Japan now. These are low cost tiny cars limited to 660 cc engines. Suzuki, Daihatsu and Mitsubishi are the only three companies producing kei cars at the present. Kei cars now account for 35% of unit sales in Japan’s 6 million a year car market. A new kei car costs around one million yen ($9000). These mini cars are cheaper to produce and also receive tax benefits from the government. Japanese people do not want to pay more for luxurious cars nowadays as they look at cars as a normal commodity. As Suzuki is the leader in Kei cars, its domestic sales overtook Honda making it the third best automaker in Japanese domestic market now.

Suzuki’s success in other countries such as India, Pakistan and Hungary is also due to the low cost mini cars it produces there. Next year Suzuki will launch a compact MPV (minivan) based on the Splash concept shown at the recent Paris motor show.



Full 2006 SEMA Auto Show Gallery link

2006 SEMA Auto Show Photo Gallery

We've also added more photos to our Paris to Bejing rally photo gallery so be sure to check them out!

Mercedes-Benz Paris to Bejing Photo Gallery

More photos in our show photo galleries...

AutoSpies.com Photo Galleries


Read Article

02WRX - 11/13/2006 2:58:25 PM

+1 Boost

Is there no justice in this world?

BMW530i - 11/13/2006 4:00:44 PM

+1 Boost

That's simply amazing. When you think of Japanese carmakers, Suzuki is probably one of the last names you'd think off - Honda would be near the top.

thecar - 11/13/2006 5:21:27 PM

+1 Boost

not really amazin ,
Honda dosent have commercial vehicle
they missed out a lot of sales

is amazing they were once Third place in Japan w/o V8 and Commercial trucks

considers DaiHaTsu is quite close to Honda Jp's number , it only tells the story that Honda is not doing well in Japan at all for the yr.

Homer008 - 11/13/2006 8:04:58 PM

+1 Boost

Remember, Net profit figure might tell you entirely a different story. I mean go take a look at Porsche, their Net profit is very high while volume may be smaller in comparison. I'm guessing also, most of yall aren't motorcycle fans or motorboat fans...
but, overall Honda is amazingly bigger and you are misleading yourselves as some of you are comparing a Suzuki and Honda is supposed to be in the same neighbor.

sheepdog

kart1 - 11/14/2006 2:12:58 AM

+1 Boost

Shouldn't they add the Daihatsu and Toyota sales together, I mean they do that when the total worldwide sales comes out??? So why not know, just to show brand sales vs corporate sales.

JUGNU - 11/14/2006 5:49:00 AM

+2 Boost

U r right Kart1 about Daithsu.Dhaitsu is TOYOTA like LEXUS.Even the DELTA,A Toyota's nameplate selling in some Developing Asian countries.

BTW Suzuki produces a lot of small or kei cars.See this ----> "Suzuki, Daihatsu and Mitsubishi are the only three companies producing kei cars at the present.Kei cars now account for 35% of unit sales in Japan’s 6 million a year car market."

I would say out of 35% Suzuki claims more than 20-25%.

Suzuki's whole line up consist of kei cars or KEY cars for ASIA.
ALTO,WagonR,Ignis,Cultus,Khyber,Carry,Baleno,Liana....etc all are volume sellers.
Especially the Alto and Carry sells in millions in ASIA.
Even their SUVs are somewhat kei cars.Like Vitara,Grand Vitara,Jimmy...etc
All coming with the choice of 1.6 and 2.0 litre engines.

On the other hand Honda doesn't have any small car other than Fit or City.Which is also relatively bigger than the normal SUZUKI and on par with Suzuki's biggest flagship model.LIANA.

Therefore Honda miss this big sector of the market and so overtook by SUZUKI in Asia.
And i believe it will be very difficult for Honda to regain it's third spot again(In ASIA) unless they make some kei or KEY cars for Asia.Small,fuel efficient budget cars.
BTW they have given Asia a CNG "Compact natural gas" Car, CIVIC CNG,and it's very successful there.

So i think the Japaneese automakers and even hopefully the GM will introduce more and more fuel efficient cars LIKE HYBRIDS in Asia soon as the Asian Market is highly profitable and the demands of the Asian people are low.


That's all from me JUGNU.


JUGNU----->THE CARMAN

MercBasher - 11/14/2006 8:26:41 PM

+1 Boost

Perhaps Honda and Suzuki should merge, they appear to have limited auto product overlap.