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PASSENGER CARS: German registrations bolster EU market

PASSENGER CARS: German registrations bolster EU market (PDF, XLS)

Brussels, 15/02/2008 - In Europe (EU27 + EFTA), 0.3% less cars were registered than in January last year, with 1,308,761 units compared to 1,312,131 in 2007. The mild decrease was due to a slightly weaker market in the EU15 (-1.6%) whereas the new Member States remained dynamic (+20.1%). Since the number of working days in January 2008 was the same in the whole region as in 2007, except for Bulgaria, which had one more day, no calendar effect occurred.

From the five major markets in Western Europe, only Germany registered more cars than last year, with a 10.5% increase. While a rise in VAT contributed to an unusually weak 2007, the German market did however register in January the second highest sales volume in the last five years. British registrations went down by 2.1%, French by 5.6%, Italian by 7.3% and Spanish by 12.7%. This may be due to the global credit crunch, impacting spending and confidence. Almost half of the EU15 countries saw their registrations
decrease.

The new Member States remained on a positive trend. For the fourth month in a row, their registrations went up by more than 10%, reaching 20.1% this month. The most dynamic market was Lithuania, which registered the biggest increase with 55.2% more cars than in January 2007, followed by Slovakia (+36.6%), Romania (34.5%) and Poland (24.6%). In absolute figures, the four leading markets clearly are Romania, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, which all registered over 10,000 new passenger cars, and close to
30,000 in the case of Romania and Poland.

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