--FILE--Crowds of visitors look at Mercedes-Benz cars during the 15th Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition, known as Auto Shanghai 2013, in Shanghai, China, 25 April 2013. Chinas auto sales logged a new monthly record in January in a sign of robust demand in the worlds biggest auto market, new data showed on Thursday (13 February 2014). Some 2.16 million cars were bought in China last month, a year-on-year rise of 5.99%, while output increased 4.44% to 2.05 million units, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) said in a report. Passenger vehicle sales rose 7.03% year-on-year to 1.85 million units, driven mainly by demand for foreign cars as the market share of local brands dropped significantly. Last month, sales of Chinese-brand passenger cars accounted for merely 38.41% of the total volume, down 4.35 percentage points from the share seen a month earlier, according to the CAAM. Among foreign brands, Japanese cars suffered a slip in the Chinese market, taking up only 13.61% of the sales volume, whereas brands from Germany, the United States, South Korea and France all saw growth.
