AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)03/20 Report--

On March 20, Wu Pei Channel announced on the social platform that a Japanese joint venture brand is about to withdraw from the Chinese market, and the production capacity of the production line will be transferred to the OEM of the same group's own brand. All the above are news from roadside news, and finally the official announcement shall prevail.

After the relevant news was exposed, many netizens speculated on who the "one-day joint venture brand" was, and many netizens speculated that it might be Changan Mazda, because it was just reported that some models had been discontinued, but the blogger denied it. "Mazda is just late and not ready to quit," he said. In addition to Mazda, many netizens commented that it might be brands such as Mitsubishi or Infiniti, but the blogger did not respond.

In the domestic market, Japanese joint venture brands mainly include Guangzhou Automobile Toyota, Guangzhou Automobile Honda, Dongfeng Honda, FAW Toyota, Dongfeng Nissan, Dongfeng Infiniti, Guangzhou Automobile Mitsubishi, Changan Mazda and so on. Among them, Toyota, Honda and Nissan joint ventures are not small in the domestic market and will not withdraw from the Chinese market, while Changan Mazda, although it was reported not long ago that the relevant models were discontinued, they were officially denied. And this year will be launched CX-50, CX-90 and other models, recently is warming up for the launch of new cars, the possibility of withdrawal from the Chinese market is not great.

Is it GAC-Mitsubishi? We can not confirm that the "one-day joint venture brand" is GAC-Mitsubishi, but the performance of GAC-Mitsubishi in the current market is not optimistic. Data show that GAC-Mitsubishi sales fell 90.91% to 330 vehicles in February from a year earlier, and cumulative sales from January to February fell 79.86% from a year earlier to 1498 vehicles.

Japanese brands such as Honda and Toyota have successively established stable cooperative relations with two local automobile groups, making use of local resources to accelerate the development of the Chinese market, while Mitsubishi has been changing joint venture partners in China since the 1990s due to factors such as joint venture stock ratio. It was not until the cooperation with Guangzhou Automobile that it was temporarily stable, but it also missed many opportunities to dig deep into the Chinese market and continue to build brand influence.

GAC-Mitsubishi itself is small, the product is single, and its own channel layout is also limited. In the face of the market after the impact of the epidemic, it did not seize the opportunity to rebound. At the same time, its product power and brand strength are between the first-line joint venture brand and the head independent brand, and the position is somewhat awkward in the current highly competitive market environment.

In fact, GAC-Mitsubishi has fallen for several years since 2019. According to the data, sales from 2019 to 2021 were 133016, 75001 and 66006 respectively, down 7.64%, 43.62% and 11.99% respectively from the same period last year. After entering 2022, the situation of GAC-Mitsubishi became even more dangerous, with annual sales of 33600 vehicles, down 49.13% from the same period last year.

According to the official website of GAC-Mitsubishi, there are four models for sale under the brand, including pure electric SUV Artuco, Olander, Xin Jinxuan and Yige fuel vehicles. Take the February data as an example, the wholesale sales of GAC-Mitsubishi in that month were 330, of which 311 were Orlande, 14 were Jinxuan ASX and 5 were Yige.

On November 19, 2022, the new generation of Eurolander launched a total of seven models, including four two-wheel drive versions and three four-wheel drive versions, of which the two-wheel drive and four-wheel drive top versions are all 7-seat models with a price range of 16.98-229800 yuan. It is understood that the third generation of Euroland is based on Nissan Qijun's CMF platform, using 1.5T four-cylinder engine + 48V light hybrid power, matching CVT gearbox.

Compared with Jinxuan, Yige and other models, the Orlande is still the best-selling model of GAC-Mitsubishi, but compared with the same class of models, the performance of the Orlander is very bleak. Retail data show that since the launch of the new Outlander, sales have been 2456 in December 2022 and 1930 in January-February 2023.

Finally, we do not know whether any Japanese joint venture brands are about to withdraw from the Chinese market. We do not know whether the Japanese joint venture that withdrew is GAC-Mitsubishi. However, there is indeed a bottleneck in the performance of Japanese joint venture brands in the domestic market, such as Nissan and Honda, while the smaller Mazda and Mitsubishi are even more difficult.

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