A week ago we exposed the massive number of cars piling up in GM's parking lots in China [7]. A few days later, we note that Chinese auto sales have collapsed at the fastest rate in 3 years [8] and an increasing number of new orders are being cancelled as the stock market crashes. But the triple whammy for US auto manufacturers - who have incessantly pitched China as their growth engine - is news from Huaxia Times that China's import car dealers saw inventory days reach a mind-blowing 143 days in May. For context, the normal average has been 24-36 days. Once again it appears the serial extrapolators at the automakers, excited by the serial extrapolators at the big banks have excitedly mal-invested right at the turn.
Car Sales tumbling...as The Wall Street Journal reports, [9]
China sold 1.51 million passenger vehicles last month, down 3.4% from a year earlier, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said Friday. That compares with a 1.2% year-over-year rise recorded in May and a 3.7% increase in April.
The performance was the worst since February 2013 when car sales fell 8.3% on-year during the weeklong Lunar New Year Holiday when car showrooms are closed. Stripping out the holiday factor, the last time China’s car market posted a decline was in September 2012, when a territorial dispute between Beijing and Tokyo over a group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea hit demand for Japanese cars.
... also cut its growth forecast for China’s automobile market in 2015 to 3% from the previous 7%.
“2015 will be an off-year for the Chinese car market,” said Dong Yang, a vice president for the auto manufacturers’ association. He said the slowdown was caused by a confluence of factors including the cooling economy, increasing restrictions on car ownership to combat congestion and pollution and stock market volatility.
“Neither a bull market nor bear market does good to car sales. Our surveys of dealers show that visiting volumes to car showrooms dropped sharply in the first-half,” said Mr. Dong.
...
“The painful market adjustment currently under way is far from over,” he said.
* * *
Auto Inventories exploding...
Huaxia Times: China's import car dealers saw inventory days reach 143 days in May vs. normal average at 24-36 days.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) July 13, 2015 [10]
But, as we previously noted, it appears there just is no more room to stuff inventories in its Shenyang, Lianing province parking lots (as China has become the new car graveyard over the last 3 years [11])
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
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But it's not just China... inventories are surging in America too... [21]
[22]
Judging by the massive volume of cars 'parked' in GM's Shenyang Liaoning lots, it is clear that automakers learned nothing from the last "if we build it, they will come" channel-stuffing inventory surging dysphoria that, among other things, led to their last bankruptcy... if only Chinese buyers would take up the credit terms like Americans.
