FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Automaker Volkswagen AG said Thursday it is on track to sell more than 1 million cars in China this year, after it set a sales record in 2007.
The Wolfsburg-based company, Europe's biggest car maker by sales, said it sold 910,491 VW, Audi and Skoda brands in China last year, up 28 percent from 2006 when it sold 711,360.
The results left the company as the top maker of passenger cars in the country, outselling its U.S. rival General Motors Corp. by 431,064 passenger cars last year, compared with 298,507 in 2006.
GM, through its passenger car joint venture, Shanghai General Motors Corp., sold 479,427 vehicles in China in 2007, up 16.9 percent.
Volkswagen said its sales figures brought its total share of the market in China, including Hong Kong, to 18 percent.
The results, coupled with restructuring measures to cut costs, ''gives us the confidence that we will break the 1 million mark with our sales in 2008,'' Winfried Vahland, chief executive of Volkswagen Group China.
Volkswagen has two joint ventures in China — one with the state-owned China FAW Group, or FAW-Volkswagen Automobile Co., and one with SAIC Motor Corp., or Shanghai Volkswagen Automotive Co.
Shares of Volkswagen were up more than half a percent to euro149.44 (US$219.38).
