Weak sales seen for second-half 2009

Sales of new vehicles dropped 30.7% since May to give total sales a five-month haul of 188,026 vehicles, a clear sign that showroom traffic has been hurt by the overall weakening economy.
Industry watchers predicted that the latter half of 2009 auto sales performance could be even weaker.

"The current economic and political intangibles all point out to a bleak outlook for the car business to turn around this year as some suggest," said an economist. "The automobile maybe a puttjai [bare necessity], but it is a major expenditure that has to be delayed."
She added that the auto market hasn't seen a meaningful downturn in 12 years and is long overdue for one.

The month of May (40,539) alone was the worst May since 2002 when the market absorbed 30,087 vehicles. Last year, May turned out 54,910 units.
Toyota is still top dog with 40.7% of the total market followed by Isuzu (21.5%) and Honda (17.4%). However, an emerging trend is in Honda winning the battle of passenger car sales and Isuzu outgunning Toyota in the pick-up segment. The second-tier group is led by Nissan at 5.2%.
Pick-ups
Isuzu won monthly honours with creative marketing on its D-Max lineup after edging out the Toyota Hilux Vigo by a mere 174 units after selling 7,484. This rivalry still commands an 80% share of all pick-ups sold in Thailand. Sales of pick-ups in May was 18,076, slightly down from April (18,901) and a shadow of last year's mark during the same period (27,106). Mitsubishi wound up in fourth with 3.8% market share despite putting on a successful roadshow. Tata from India sold 70 units last month to bring its total to 330, improving on the 19 it sold last year. The second tier leader is Nissan with 1,454 sold last month to give it an 8.2% share on sales of 7,067 units, down 44.5% from last year during the same period. Ford also hopes to gain ground with a B499,000 2.5XL variant of the Ranger.
Passenger cars
Honda skipped to another victory over Toyota with 7,268 units over Toyota's 6,700 last month.
April and May saw Honda improve by 128% and 101% when compared to last year during the same periods. Toyota still leads by two percentage points in overall market share or a difference of 2,353 units. This segment is the only performer with incremental gains in volume sales each month. Although as a segment, it is down 13.9% when compared to last year during the same period.

(Bangkok Post)

Might be that the market is now filled up, give it some time and the sales will go up again.

They blame the ecconomy, I don't believe that since people will always need cars. It is just that the current models have been out for a few years and that means they will change soon. People are waiting, they do not want to buy a new car/pickup now if it will change next year!

My two cents..