Logically speaking, it couldn't have been otherwise with the financial downturn and people sparing their few bucks for survival. Who would think of buying cars in such critical conditions? But we dare to say 2008 wasn't the worst year possible as there were some markets in this world that showed interest in buying cars. Take the Chinese auto market for instance.
Although figures were not what we could call spectacular in China last year, there was however a slight growth of 6.7 percent for auto sales. According to a report discussed by The Business Week, this is the first time growth has fallen below 10 percent since 1999.
It seems this increase is a heavy drop from the almost 22 percent increase in sales in 2007, the official Xinhua News Agency reported on Monday. But a growth is still a growth... The most significant drops were scored in the autumn of 2008. Although sales fell in August and in September, they increased by 8 percent in October and then continued their descending trend until the end of the year.
Obviously, those who suffered the most from this gloomy picture were the global automakers who didn't manage to recover their billions of dollars invested in this market. The recession came like a shock as earlier forecasts claimed more than 10 million of vehicles would be sold in China last year. The country managed to keep its title as the the world's second largest car market, but only 9.38 million units were sold despite the predictions.
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