Thailand’s vehicle market in 2021 falls by just 0.2% with 734,372 sales, reporting a positive performance only in Q2, followed by a double-digit fall in the second part of the year. Toyota remains the undiscussed leader, holding over 40% market share.
Market Trend
Thailand’s car market this year attempted ineffectively to recover from the pandemic crash of 2020 and after a neutral performance in Q1 reported positive performance only in Q2 due to the very low levels reached in Q2 2020, in the second half sales remained down in double-digits.
Crucial for the country and producing over 1 million vehicles per year, the vehicle market started coming out from a really harsh period in 2017.
Indeed a “crazy” government incentive run in 2012 had generated a big bubble of sales with doubling 2012 sales at the record volume of 1.43 million (including HCVs) followed by a fall to a minimum of 768,000 units in 2016, more or less the same level of 2011. Recovery started in 2017 when the market was positively impacted by the possibility, after 5 years of ownership, to re-sell vehicles purchased during the “first car buyers” 2012 incentive campaign.
The market grew 13.4% in 2017 with 871,644 units, holding the impressive pace also in 2018, with sales at 1,041,739 (+19.5%). In 2019, according to data released by the Thai Automotive Industry Association, the market has pushed the breaks, reporting a flat performance with total sales at 1,040,123 (-0.2%).
Sales in 2020 have fallen by 25.9% due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, 771,141 units have been sold.
In 2021 the year started almost flat for the Thai market, in fact, in Q1 233,668 units have been sold, reporting a 0.8% decrease in sales compared to Q1 2020, while in Q2 sales started growing quickly, reporting a 33.5% increase in sales with 195,838 units due to the incredibly low volumes in Q2 2020.
In Q3 sales started dropping in double-digits again, losing 12.3% sales with 156,868 units, and in Q4 sales fell 15.3% with 147,998 units.
Indeed, Full-Year sales for 2021 have been 734,372, reporting a 0.2% decrease compared to 2019.
Brand-wise, this year the leader Toyota (+3.2%) gained 3.3% market share, followed by Honda (-12.2%), which lost 1.3% share. Mitsubishi lost 0.8% share, falling 12.5%. Mazda reached 4th place (-10%), followed by Nissan -down 1 spot- which fell 23.4%.
Ford gained 8.4%, followed by MG which rose 13.9% and reported the best performance, and Suzuki which gained 1.5%. Closing the leaderboard we have BMW -up 1 spot- losing 6.1% this year and Mercedes -down 1 spot- losing 17.1%.
The most sold vehicle this year remains the Isuzu D-Max (+14.5%) with 149,104 units sold, followed by the Toyota Hilux, which gained 4.6% registering 130,855 new sales this year. The Honda City (+40.6%) closes the podium by jumping 1 spot and reports 42,485 new units sold.
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales for all Brands, top 10 Manufacturers Groups and top 10 Models.
