Shanghai (ZXZC)- Honda delivered 1,554,433 new vehicles in China throughout 2019, hitting an all-time high in terms of annual sales, according to the Japanese automaker's China branch. Compared to its 2018 performance, the company obtained a growth of 8.5% in the world's largest auto market.

Two joint ventures in China achieved sales rise. GAC Honda saw its retail sales grow 4.1% year on year to 765,517 units, and Dongfeng Honda's full-year deliveries jumped 13.2% to 788,916 units.

In 2019, there were seven models—the Civic, the CR-V, the XR-V, the Accord, the Crider, the Vezel and the Fit—whose respective annual deliveries all surpassed 100,000 units.

Nevertheless, in the year-end spurt, Honda failed to maintain the previous prolonged rising momentum. With 142,831 new car delivered in this country, the carmaker was hit by a 25.6% plunge over a year ago in December, the second-time downturn within 2019—the former took place in February due to the Chinese New Year Holiday.

Retailing 67,305 new vehicles, GAC Honda posted a 20.4% year-on-year drop. However, the latest decrease didn't prevent the joint venture from achieving its sales goal—735 thousand units, remaining flat from its 2018 deliveries.

GAC Honda rolled out in 2019 such new models as the new Vezel, the Odyssey Hybrid, the all-new mid-sized SUV Breeze and its first all-electric SUV VE-1, which helped the company attain a stable increase.

Dongfeng Honda delivered 75,526 vehicles in December, a steep decline of 29.6% from the year-ago period. The Wuhan-based joint venture closed its 2019 with 800,000 vehicles produced in total (photo source: Honda).