Nissan only brand to see pickup growth

AUTOMOBILES

Nissan only brand to see pickup growth

SANTAN SANTIVIMOLNAT

All brands except Nissan have reported a decline in sales for their one-ton pickup trucks in the first 11 months of the year.

Pickup trucks are the best selling vehicles in Thailand, the world's second largest pickup truck market after the United States.

Sales in the first 11 months of this year dropped 9.4% to 358,672 units from 391,714 units in the same period last year.

Nissan, however, enjoyed 38.4% sales expansion, helped by the fact that its Frontier Navara pickup is a fairly new product while rival models have mostly reached the end of their life cycles.

Toyota sold 152,059 pickup trucks in the first 10 months of this year, down 5.6% from 161,121 units sold in the same period last year, according to figures compiled by Toyota Motor Thailand Co.

The decline was mainly due to decreased sales of Fortuner passenger pickup vehicles (PPVs), of which Toyota sold only 13,604 from January to November, down 22.8% from 17,631 units in the same period last year. The Fortuner model has been on the market for three years.

Sales of Chevrolet Colorado pickup trucks fell 42.6% to only 11,336 units in the first 11 months of the year from 19,748 in the same period last year. Executives of Chevrolet in Thailand could not be reached for comment.

Isuzu, once the leader in the pickup truck market, sold 118,410 units for the period, down 13% from the same period last year. The decline was small because Isuzu successfully boosted sales of its Mu-7 PPVs by 14.6% for the period to 6,118 units.

Mitsubishi saw sales drop 15.2% to 19,925 units; Ford sales fell 7.6% to 11,479 units; and Mazda sales dropped 4% to 10,656 units. Ford sold 863 Everest PPVs in the 11 months to November, up sharply by 62.2% from 532 units in the same period last year.

Toyota still captured a 42.4% share, the largest in the pickup truck segment, while Isuzu held a 34.7% share, the second largest.