Sales of new cars in Japan may fall to their lowest in 34 years in 2008 as consumers hit by stock market declines cut back on spending, Nikkei English News reported today, without saying how it got the information.
November sales may reach 200,000 units, down by a third from a year earlier, after declines of 5 percent and 13 percent in September and October, Nikkei said. Sales are expected to total about 3.25 million units this year, the lowest since 1974, the report said.
October output by the country’s 12 automakers fell 6.8 percent from a year earlier, the biggest drop for the month since 1999, to 1.01 million vehicles, the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association said in a statement yesterday.
Meanwhile Honda Motor Co, Japan's second- largest carmaker, said it will be “very difficult” to meet its full-year profit forecast as the company faces an increasingly severe sales outlook.
The operating environment has “worsened day by day” since the company revised its forecast on October 28, Honda spokesman Hiroyuki Horiuchi said in a phone interview.
Honda will cut output by 40,000 units at a plant in Saitama prefecture that builds Accord sedans starting this month and reduce production of Civic compacts and CR-V sport-utility vehicles at a factory in the UK by 21,000 units. Honda's exports to the US plunged 30 per cent in October as the credit crunch pushed industrywide sales in the country to the lowest level since 1983.
“With people unable to buy homes or losing their homes, fewer and fewer people are buying or replacing their cars,” said Yuuki Sakurai.carmakers are suffering, and Honda is no exception.”
Last month the company cut its forecast for operating profit 13 per cent to $5.8 billion for the year ending March. It also lowered its net income forecast to ¥485 billion yen from ¥490 billion.
