New car registrations in Europe jumped 27% in November versus year-ago levels, according to data released by the European automakers’ trade body, ACEA.
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ACEA’s figures for November confirmed those from JD Power for Western Europe, published earlier this month on just-auto and showed the continued impact of scrappage incentives in boosting a number of national markets in Western Europe.
Car sales in the new EU member states of central and eastern Europe – where scrappage incentives have not been applied this year – were down almost 17% on last year, ACEA reported.
November car sales in Western Europe stood at 1,116,845 units in November, or 30.6% more than a year ago. Most markets expanded, with results ranging from +1% in Portugal to +57.6% in the UK. The increase was 48.3% in France, 37.3% in Spain, 31.2% in Italy and 19.7% in Germany. Eleven months into the year, the West European car market remained stable (at 12.3m units; -0.7%) compared to the same period of 2008. Only three countries posted growth: France (+7.6%), Austria (+7.9%) and Germany (+25.4%). The Italian market contracted by 1.4%, the British by 8.8% and the Spanish by 20.8%.
In the new EU Member States, new registrations decreased by 16.7% in November. Only the Czech Republic (+31.5%) and Slovenia (+3.7%) saw their markets expand. The Polish market remained stable (-0.4%). The downturn in the other countries ranged from -23.9% (in Slovakia) to -84.9% (in Latvia). From January to November, 778,063 new cars were registered,or 27.4% less than over the same period a year ago. The Slovak and Czech markets grew by 10.7% and 10.1% respectively. Poland (+0.5%) remained the largest with a total of 291,715 units, while Romania became the third biggest market despite a 60.7% contraction.
Volkswagen Group has led the European market this year, with sales in the first 11 months of 2.85m units, some 0.6% ahead of the same period last year. VW Group’s share in the period gained to 21.2%, versus 20.5% last year. However, its premium Audi brand saw sales down 7.4% year-to-date.
Also emphasising harder times for premium marques, in a market that has generally enjoyed a small car boost under scrappage, were sharply lower sales for Mercedes-Benz and BMW year-to-date. BMW sales were off almost 17% to 524,129 units while Mercedes was down almost 15% to 551,748 units.
Lexus sales in the first 11 months were down a hefty 28.5% to 19,084 units.
See also: JD Power’s November sales analysis
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