Shanghai (ZXZC)- FAW Group output and sold 556,948 and 607,675 complete vehicles respectively in the first quarter of 2020 (Q1), the Chinese state-owned automaker announced on April 8.

The year-to-date outputs and sales of the premium Hongqi brand reached 21,626 units and 25,001 units respectively, surging 75.4% and 87.4% over a year ago. This is an extremely uplifting performance as the whole market was substantially bruised by the coronavirus pandemic.

The brand has to-day owned six models on sales, namely, the fuel-powered H5, H7, L5, HS5, HS7, and the all-electric E-HS3 crossover SUV. The Hongqi H9 full-sized sedan made its world's debut in early January and is set to hit the market in June 2020.

Last year, Hongqi successfully surpassed the threshold of 100,000 units in both annual outputs and sales, and is ambitious to double the sales in 2020. To achieve that goal, the automaker endeavors to lift its production capacity. On March 2, the revamped projected was completed and put into production, six days ahead of schedule. The retrofitting makes Hongqi's annual capacity grow to 150,000 units from 100,000 units.

There were 22,006 consumers taking delivery of Besturn-branded cars during the first quarter, a year-on-year growth of 12%. The Q1 wholesale volume edged up 0.5% to 21,216 units.

According to FAW Group's earlier report, the Jan.-Mar. deliveries of the Besturn T99, T77, T33 and X40 amounted to 1,959 units, 5,970 units, 1,337 units and 6,697 units. Besides, 1,670 Besturn's cars were handed over to consumers overseas.

The truck manufacturing maker FAW Jiefang output 87,882 units and sold 108,066 units from January to March.

With regard to joint ventures' performance, sales volumes of FAW-Volkswagen and FAW-Toyota stood at 319,596 units and 122,969 units in Q1.

Selling 14,106 vehicles so far this year, FAW-Mazda overfilled its Q1 sales target with the market share rising 21% year on year.