Chinese car sales fell almost 12 per cent last month compared with a year earlier, adding to the woes of global automakers as they struggled with new EU emissions standards.

The drop of 11.7 per cent reported by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers was the steepest in more than six years, and pushes year-to-November sales growth into negative territory for the first time since the early 1990s. It was also the fourth straight month of falling auto sales in China, the world’s biggest car market.

About 29m new vehicles were sold in China last year compared with 19m in the US. Foreign and imported brands had a 62 per cent share of the Chinese market in the first half of this year, according to McKinsey, and it is crucial to the profitability of global automakers.