The real picture of car sales in Europe
The data released by ACEA, the European industry association, indicates that 1.42 million vehicles were registered in last four months. The jump is 9.6%. However this statistics when compared with drop of 9.5% in March reveals that new car registrations, in the last four months rose only by 1%. It reflects on tepid interest of Europeans in new cars. Italians, second biggest car buyers in the continent were the least interested due to weakening economy and withdrawal of incentives by the government.
According to ACEA, European market got three additional working days, which helped them in registering more number of new cars not withstanding financial crisis in U.S. and substantial rise in fuel prices.
The figures, compared with last year, show drop of new car registration as 8.2% in Italy and 11.5% in Spain which is the smallest among the five European markets. According to VDA, the German automotive association, Italian market has continued to drop 4 months in a row. It attributes worsening of market to the stagnating economy, withdrawal of incentives and plunging of consumers’ confidence.
Eastern Europe an emerging new market for growth, also registered lower sales in April, mainly due to lack of Easter holidays. Romania registered growth of just 1% against that of 24% in first quarter of the year.
50% of new cars are sold in Romania and Poland where as Hungary and Czech Republic account for 25% sale by comparison.
Many semi-premium brands, particularly in Western Europe also witnessed slump in the sales.
At Ford, sale of Volvo Cars dropped 3.7 percent, and that of Land Rover, Saab and Alfa Romeo dropped by more than 10%. Toyota and Hondas were no exceptions to the slump.
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