BEIJING, Apr 3 (Reuters): A quality issue in China is threatening to put a stop to the growth run Japan's Honda Motor Co Ltd has been on in the world's biggest auto market for the last few years.
Honda's sales in China fell 13.0 per cent in March from a year earlier to 97,587 vehicles, the company said on Tuesday. Sales volume during the first three months of the year totalled 300,826 vehicles, down 2.3 per cent from the same period a year earlier.
The volume downturn follows a significant sales increase seen by the Tokyo automaker in China since 2015, helped by popular sport-utility vehicles (SUVs) and more recently by a redesigned Civic.
Last year, Honda's sales volume rose 15.5 per cent from a year earlier to 1.44 million vehicles, compared with the 3.0 per cent growth of the overall market.
Honda's China sales were up 24 per cent in 2016 and 32.5 per cent in 2015.
The quality issue Honda has been dealing with in China since the outset of this year is a cold-climate engine problem caused by an unusual amount of un-combusted petrol collecting in the engine's lubricant oil pan.
Honda in early March decided to halt new sales of its CR-V and noted the company might have to do the same with the Civic after a Chinese quality watchdog rejected the automaker's plan to recall 350,000 of the cars to fix the problem.
The CR-V sales termination began in early March and lasted throughout the month.
Sales of the compact SUV in March totalled just 916 vehicles, compared with the 14,360 Honda sold a year earlier.
Honda did not stop selling the Civic in early March, but its volume also fell sharply - down 16.5 per cent to 13,586 vehicles.
