German registrations bolster EU new car market

In Europe (the EU27 + EFTA countries), 0.3% fewer cars were registered in January 2008 than the same month last year - 1,308,761 units compared to 1,312,131.
 
The decrease was due to a slightly weaker market in the EU15 (-1.6%) whereas sales rose by 20.1% in the new Member States. Since the number of working days in January 2008 was the same in the whole region as in 2007, except for Bulgaria, no calendar effect occurred, the ACEA reported this morning.
 
Of 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 revived to register in January the second highest sales volume of the last five years. British registrations went down by 2.1%, French by 5.6%, Italian by 7.3% and Spanish by 12.7%. Almost half of the EU15 countries saw new car registrations decrease.
 
New car markets in the new EU Member States remained on a positive trend. For the fourth successive month their registrations went up by more than 10%. 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 Central/Eastern European leading markets are Romania, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, which each registered over 10,000 new passenger cars, and close to 30,000 in the case of Romania and Poland.
 
From: Auto Industry

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