Apr. 12, 2012 (China Knowledge) - China's sales of passenger cars, including minibuses, amounted to 1.27 million units in March this year, up 2.6% year on year or 16.2% month on month, according to statistics released by the National Passenger Car Market Information Joint Committee.

Last month, the sales of SUVs experienced the biggest increase of 20.2% year on year, reaching 155,175 units, and the sales of sedans increased 2.0% year on year to 837,685 units. The sales of MPVs fell 2.5% year on year to 46,960 units, and sales of minibuses dropped 3.8% year on year to 228,669 million units.

Including sales of minibuses, the top four passenger car sellers in China in March were SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile, Shanghai General Motors Co Ltd, Shanghai Volkswagen Automotive Co Ltd and FAW-Volkswagen Automotive Co, whose sales were 127,443 units, 110,688 units, 110,008 units and 73,118 million units, respectively.

In the first three months of this year, China's sales of passenger cars rose 0.3% year on year to 3.53 million units, and its output of passenger cars grew 0.3% to 3.75 million units.