Car sales in Spain and Italy fell to their lowest September levels in 15 years, and sales in France also dipped last month.
That, reported Reuters, prompted analysts to warn that more bad news may be on the way as Europe’s gloomy economic outlook takes a toll.
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Italian sales fell 5.7% to 146,388 cars in September, the Italian transport ministry said. Imported car association UNRAE said volumes were the lowest since 1996, and orders fell 6.5% to touch levels that were the worst since records started in 1998.
“These considerations lead us to see a particularly difficult last part to the year,” it said, forecasting a full-year drop in sales of 11%.
Spanish sales fell 1.3% year-on-year to 55,572 cars, industry association ANFAC said, blaming a VAT sales tax hike combined with the withdrawal of government subsidies.
“We would have to go back to 1993 to find such a meagre market,” ANFAC told Reuters. “The consequences of having such a weak market can be seen in the country’s fleet of vehicles, which has an average age of 10 years, one of the highest in Europe.”
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By GlobalDataIn the first nine months, Spain saw a 20.7% year on year dip in car sales.
In France car sales fell 1.4% according to automakers group CCFA said. The market held up in an unfavourable economic situation, particularly given that a scrappage scheme was still boosting sales in September 2010.
“The market is slowly going down, but it is resilient,” a CCFA spokesman told the news agency, adding the association now expects a better outcome than its previous forecast for a fall of 8-10% for the full year.
For the first nine months, registrations were up 0.2%.
“The next few months will be more difficult, whether it is end-2011 or the beginning of 2012, especially because of the unfavourable comparison base,” Flavien Neuvy, head of credit provider Cetelem’s autos research unit, told Reuters. “But the market is resisting very well.”
Xerfi analyst Philippe Gattet said in a research note that aggressive promotions by carmakers helped support sales in France. “In any case, automobile statistics in the coming months will definitely be bad,” he said.
“We must not lose sight of the fact that the economic context has been getting worse for several months and that the outlook is bad for the French economy,” Gattet said.
Xerfi expects the French market to fall 5% in 2011.
Italian think tank Promotor said it expects car sales in Italy this year to be just under 1.8m vehicles, “a level so low as to put at risk the survival of a certain number of dealerships”.
Promotor told Reuters it was not possible to conceive of a recovery of the car market in 2012 with Italy’s economy “on the edge of an abyss.”
