November 9, 2026
Geely is doing most of the work for the Chinese brands that report to Mexico’s vehicle register, ten months into a steep tariff. INEGI’s October report shows the brand gaining 1,897 units on October 2025 while the seven other Chinese brands reporting in both years lost 897 between them.
| Period | Line | 2026 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| October | Geely | 4,398 | 2,501 | +75.8% |
| October | Seven other Chinese brands | 10,083 | 10,980 | -8.2% |
| October | Mexico total | 137,395 | 133,260 | +3.1% |
| January to October | Geely | 40,310 | 15,269 | +164.0% |
| January to October | Seven other Chinese brands | 105,800 | 97,590 | +8.4% |
| January to October | Mexico total | 1,287,225 | 1,228,108 | +4.8% |
Source: INEGI’s brand table, November 9, with its own year-earlier figures. Seven others: MG, JAC, Changan, Great Wall, Jetour Soueast, GAC and Foton, the Chinese brands with figures for both full periods; MG, owned by China’s SAIC, counts. Volvo, which Geely owns, sells as a Swedish brand and is left out, as are Zeekr Lynk&Co, which has no 2025 figure, and Motornation’s BAIC, JMC, DFSK and Seres, which stopped reporting this year.
Over ten months the group still looks strong. The eight brands added 33,251 sales, more than half of the market’s whole gain. Their share climbed from 9.2% to 11.4%. Without Geely that gain shrinks to about a quarter of its size. Brands outside the Chinese labels grew 2.8% over the same ten months and 2.5% in October, so the steady part of Mexico’s market is now the part that is not Chinese.
October fits the stockpile argument
Mexico raised its tariff on Chinese-made cars from 20% to 50% on January 1, through a December tariff decree covering countries without a trade deal. Sales kept rising anyway, which Mexico’s deputy minister for foreign trade called misleading in July. His reason was that the makers began the year holding large stocks shipped ahead of the increase.
October fits that account. Changan fell 24.1% and Great Wall 25.2%, while MG, the largest of the seven, was flat. The group was up 10.5% through September, so a single month took more than two points off its growth. INEGI publishes no inventory figures, and one month cannot prove the stock has run out.
Geely’s Mexico chief, Bryan Wu, said before the tariff that it would hold prices across its range through 2026, a promise that gets more expensive as pre-tariff cars sell through. INEGI’s figures cannot say whether that explains the gap. Geely is slowing too, from a 91.1% gain in September to 75.8% in October, though no other Chinese brand above 1,000 October sales grew at all.
INEGI’s count is a floor
BYD does not report to the register, and Chirey, Omoda and Jetour stopped in April 2025. The AMDA dealer association’s fuller tally, in the same Autocosmos report citing Reuters, put Chinese brands at 17% of first-half sales against 14% a year earlier. GAC joined the register this month with history from January 2024, adding 6,283 to the 2025 base, so the totals in our September report predate it. Growth stays at 4.8% either way; the Mexico sales data page carries the series.
INEGI’s next full report is set for December 2. A second fall for the seven would leave the reported Chinese gain resting on one company.
