Mexico Auto Output More Than Doubles From 2009 as Exports Surge to Record

Mexican production of cars and light trucks more than doubled in June from the same month a year earlier as the country exported a record number of vehicles, the nation’s Automobile Industry Association said.

Output increased 102 percent to 206,195 units last month, the group said today in a statement distributed in Mexico City. That’s the third highest monthly total in Mexico’s history, trailing the months of August 2007 and October 2008, according to Eduardo Solis, the head of the association.

Automakers increased production in response to higher external demand, even as Mexico’s domestic auto sales were just 59,909 in June, below the 2008 average of more than 85,000 a month, the group said in the report. Exports rose 109 percent to 177,575 cars and light trucks, a record one-month total.

“We’re winning in our principal markets,” Solis said.

Mexico shipped 67 percent of its vehicle exports to the U.S. in June. Europe was the second-biggest market, buying 8.9 percent of the autos shipped abroad in the period. Latin America was third.

Accumulated production totaled 1,077,651 through June this year, up 79 percent from the same period in 2009. Total exports in 2010 through the first half reached 887,872, an 83 percent increase from the year earlier period.

The peso weakened 0.5 percent to 12.8310 per dollar at 3:39 p.m. New York time from 12.7693 on July 9.

To contact the reporter on this story: Adriana Lopez Caraveo in Mexico City at adrianalopez@bloomberg.net; Jonathan J. Levin in Mexico City at jlevin20@bloomberg.net

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