Chevrolet Was Once Again Brazil’s Best-Selling Brand In 2020

General Motors just announced that Chevrolet, its top-volume brand, ended 2020 as the best-selling car brand in Brazil, which is the largest auto market in South America and among the eight biggest in the world. Once again, the Bow Tie brand led the Brazilian market with a 17.4 percent market share and a total of 338,549 units sold during the past year.

As such, 2020 becomes the fifth consecutive year that Chevrolet ranks first in sales in the Brazilian automotive market, an unprecedented feat for the only GM brand in the country. Although it lost its number-one position for a few months and its leadership in accumulated sales was seriously threatened, Chevy managed to end the year on the first step of the podium thanks to a strategic renewal of its product portfolio.

“In a year during which business sustainability was a major challenge, also due to the strong devaluation of the real against the dollar, which is impacting the general increase in car prices, Chevrolet’s leadership is the result of a winning strategy,” said GM South America President, Carlos Zarlenga, in a statement. “We have intensified the focus on retail sales, where the brand has expanded its leadership to almost 6 percentage points in relation to the closest competitor,” he added.

The main reason behind the commercial success of GM’s best-selling brand in Brazil is the Chevrolet Onix. The subcompact vehicle ended the 2020 calendar year with a total of 218,743 units sold, which represents nearly 65 percent of the brand’s overall volume, establishing itself in the process as best-selling car in the South American country for the sixth consecutive year. Despite the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, Onix sales remained solid for the first year of the second-generation model.

In addition, the wide acceptance of the all-new Chevrolet Tracker, locally manufactured at the São Caetano do Sul plant also contributed to the brand’s success. The next-generation subcompact crossover captivated Brazilian consumers and quickly became one of the main benchmarks in the hotly contested utility segment in the country, with total sales of 49,372 units in 2020. In fact, it was the fastest-growing nameplate in Brazil last year.

This great result also means that Brazil maintains its position as the second largest market for Chevrolet in the world, for the second consecutive year, a position that the Amazonian country regained in 2019 after being pushed down to third by China during the previous seven years. As such, the Brazilian market plays a prominent role in the Bow Tie brand’s global strategy in the short and medium term.

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