GM's Chinese Year Kicks Off in Style

Not exactly the Chinese year (which started on February 3 and is called the Year of the Rabbit, by the way), but the fact did remains: GM's operations in China are off to a flying start in 2011, after the car maker announced a 22.3 percent rise in sales compared to the same month of last year.

GM sold in China 268,071 vehicles, managing to bring its local market share to 14.7 percent in the process. Not a bad piece of the pie, considering the pie itself, which keeps on growing to levels never envisioned before.

But the number of cars sold we mentioned above are only a small part of GM's achievement in the country. Together with the countless companies it operates one type of joint venture or another, GM sold a total of 2,351,610 vehicles in 2010. That number now seems easy to overcome, even if this is only the beginning of a new year of sales.

The best selling GM brand in China was, amazingly or not, Cadillac, which exploded to 2,530 units, a 194.2 percent leap from last year. Sales were driven by the SRX, which accounted for some 60 percent of the total brand sales.

The brand was followed by Buick, a Chinese favorite. 70,441 units left the dealerships' lots, 50.3 percent more than last year. Chevy, the main badge in the GM lineup, was responsible for 67,711 units (an increase of 36.9 percent from January 2010).

Overall, January 2011 has been a record year for GM in China, one of many to come, if we are to judge by the numbers posted by the automaker in the past two years.