Car Brands in Thailand

Updated : February 2014

New Passenger Cars on the Road 2013 :

Toyota and Honda are clearly the most sought cars in Thailand. Other Japanese car brands do well. Lots of these cars are produced in Thailand locally. Chevrolet and Ford has equal shares, and have a reasonable presence in the domestic market.

In the mainstream car market, targeting middle- and low-income users, the European brands are conspicuous by their absence. Clearly there are no or few local dealers for these brands, explaining low sales. Imported cars face heavy duties, and when there are no local dealerships, where do you go for maintenance and repairs? About 600 Volkswagen cars sold in one year in Thailand, quite puzzling. It looks like European cars never considered Thailand as a base of production or car sales.

In the high-end and luxury car markets, the European brands are otherwise well presented, with the standard Mercedes Benz and BMWs having good sales, while the Italian fashion cars (Maserati, Ferrari, Lamborghini) can be found crawling on Bangkok's streets.

While (we estimate) about 1/6 of the population of Thailand, lives in Bangkok, the capital is worth half of the car sales in the country.

New Pick-Up Type Vehicles on the road, 2013.

Sales of pick-up trucks are dominated by Japanese owned companies, with most cars locally produced. Toyota again tops the list, with Isuzu another favorite.

There are twice as much new cars sold in the provinces of Thailand, than in the capital Bangkok.

New Motorcycles on the road 2013.

About 2 million new motorcycles sold in 2013, the vast majority in the provinces (and there causing havoc on the roads). Honda is dominating the motorcycle market, with almost 75% of all sales.

Just about 1,000 Harley Davidson sales, virtually all in Bangkok.

Source : Transport Statistics Sub-Division, Department of Land Transport