Sino-German car joint venture Shanghai Volkswagen Automobile Co Ltd retained its crown as the biggest passenger car provider in China last month with strong sales growth despite a fiery traffic accident that took the life of its president on July 17.

The company moved 82,465 cars in July, up 26.6 percent from a year earlier, it said.

In the first seven months of this year, the joint venture's sales surged by 37.6 percent year-on-year to 529,473 units, including 430,781 Volkswagen cars and 98,692 units under Czech brand Skoda.

Sales of its best-selling model, the compact Lavida, jumped by 57.4 percent to 134,233 units in the period, it said.

The strong performance came as the company dealt with the death of its President Liu Jian, who was killed in a horrific traffic accident while on a business trip in northwest China.

Sales of the company's first SUV model - the Tiguan - launched in March, reached 27,279 units by the end of July.

Shanghai Volkswagen last month started building a new 300,000-unit assembly plant in Yizheng, east China's Jiangsu province, to meet growing demand.

The new plant will be put into operation at the end of 2012.

The company now has four factories in Shanghai and Nanjing, capital city of Jiangsu, with a combined production capacity of 900,000 units a year.

The joint venture has more than 600 dealers for the Volkswagen brand and 235 Skoda outlets in China.