Recently, the news that GAC Acura is about to be delisted has been hyped up on the Internet, because some media have learned from dealers that Acura will withdraw from the Chinese market, and they are currently waiting for the final notice of the manufacturer. It is understood that now many 4S stores of GAC Acura are clearing inventory or closing, and they have no longer booked new cars from manufacturers, and it seems that everything is preparing for delisting.
At the same time, the factory of GAC Acura has also been discontinued, many auto media are reporting, GAC Acura has been discussed within the end, exiting the Chinese market has become a foregone conclusion, the rest is the official announcement.
Signs of Acura's delisting were already evident last year
For the news of the delisting of GAC Acura, on the surface, it is an emergency, but in fact, GAC Acura has paved the way for delisting last year. In the past year, Acura has successively stopped China's import car business and car business, Acura imported model MDX has long been discontinued in China, Acura TLX-L also stopped production in 2019, acura currently only has CDX and RDX two models on sale in China.
Since entering China in 2006, the market performance of GAC Acura has been a continuous downturn, with perennial sales of about 5,000 vehicles, even in the highlight moment of 2017, the annual sales volume is less than 20,000 vehicles, after experiencing the highlight of 2017, the sales of GAC Acura are declining year by year.
In 2014, Acura was full of confidence, and in its "2020 plan" for the Chinese market, Seiji Kuraishi, former general manager of Honda Technology Research, said that "by 2020, Acura's annual sales target will reach 100,000 vehicles." However, by 2020, GAC Acura has only sold 11,193 vehicles. Last year, GAC Acura's sales in China were only 6554 vehicles, even less than the monthly sales of star models.
The continuous decline in sales has also made GAC Acura have to recognize the fact that the annual sales of a brand is less than 10,000 vehicles, is there really a need for a joint venture?
Is Acura's dismal sales really unsatisfactory?
As a high-end brand of Honda, Acura's performance in China after entering The country is diametrically opposed to Lexus' performance in China, but it has formed a difficult brother with Nissan Infiniti. Some people even attribute acura's failure to changan automobiles to its car logo having an inexplicable relationship with Changan Automobile, which was once considered a high-end brand of Changan.
In fact, acura's failure is mainly due to the urgency of the time for gold mining, or because of the stubbornness of the technical house, after the introduction of acura into the country, Honda did not make adjustments to the Chinese market, still following the set of large displacement rough design routes in North America. Many people, including Acura herself, believe that the reason for the dismal sales in China is because of the dissatisfaction of the water and soil.
But how does Lexus explain it? Lexus, like Acura, is the product of evolution in the North American market, but Lexus's performance in China is well known, and once reached the point of queuing up to buy at a higher price. Therefore, Acura's sluggish performance in China is not unsatisfied, but a quality control problem, Lexus does not produce domestic production so that its own quality control has a great guarantee, coupled with the vanity of domestic consumers, that imports must be better than domestic.
It is not only GAC Acura that is about to be delisted
In China, there has always been a sentence of "a hundred years of Ford, destroyed by Changan", in fact, the main thing this sentence wants to express is not that Ford was destroyed by Changan, but that the car companies that jointly invested with Changan seem to have performed less than ideally, but Changan itself is growing stronger and stronger.
In fact, the joint venture with GAC car companies is not much better, GAC FCA, GAC Mitsubishi in the domestic situation is not much better than GAC Acura, but GAC Toyota and GAC Honda are too dazzling, thus ignoring the poor sales performance of other GAC joint ventures.
In terms of sales, GAC FCA's total sales last year were 20,123 units, down 50.33% year-on-year; while GAC Mitsubishi was relatively better, but its annual sales were only 66,000 units, down 11.99% year-on-year. According to the current sales decline rate, GAC FCA and GAC Mitsubishi are bound to follow in the footsteps of GAC Acura's delisting.
From GAC FCA and GAC Mitsubishi we can find several common points, one is that Mitsubishi and Jeep are not considered global auto giants, more are regional well-known brands, and the product update iteration cycle is long, it is difficult to adapt to the fiercely competitive environment of the domestic auto market; the second is that there are no car products, which for a car company, no car products means cutting off an arm.
The third is that Jppe and Mitsubishi's star models have not been able to achieve domestic production, mentioning Jppe we first think of the Wrangler, and when it comes to Mitsubishi, the first thing that comes to mind is Pajero, but the two most well-known models are imported, and the domestic ones are some of the lower-end SUV suitable for home use.
Wrangler and Pajero, as models with super popularity and reputation in the hardcore off-road market, if they are domestically produced, it is bound to promote a significant increase in sales, and will not let the Great Wall Tank 300 and Tank 500 catch up behind in the hardcore off-road market. But if Pajero and Wrangler achieve domestic production, and word of mouth cannot be guaranteed, for Jeep and Mitsubishi, it is a matter of choice.
Write at the end:
In the period of rapid growth of the domestic automobile market, no matter which brand, it seems that as long as it enters the Chinese automobile market, it can get a piece of the pie from it, but as domestic consumers become more and more aware of cars, and the intensification of competition in the car market, in recent years, many joint venture car companies have been unable to adapt to the Chinese market, thus delisting with regret.
Behind the delisting of these joint venture car companies, in fact, it is also affected by the comprehensive rise of independent brands, in the competition of the head independent car companies, the second- and third-tier joint venture car companies have neither technical advantages nor cost-effective advantages, and it is not surprising that sales are dismal.
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