Chinese auto sales soar 77.9 percent

China's auto sales soared 77.9 percent in September from a year ago to 1.33 million units, an industry body said Tuesday, the seventh straight month that sales exceeded the one million unit mark. For the first nine months of the year, vehicle sales rose 34.2 percent from the same period a year earlier to 9.66 million units, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said in a statement on its website.
Auto sales in the country are expected to break the 10 million unit mark in the middle of this month and surpass 12 million for the full year, it said. Sales of passenger cars, including sedans, multi-purpose vehicles and sport utilities, rose 83.6 percent on year to 1.02 million units last month, the association said. That represented an 18.3 percent increase from August, it said. Sales volume reached 7.24 million units in the January to September period.