German new car registrations fell 2% in February, extending January’s decline that came on the heels of a strong sales spurt at the end of 2004, German auto industry association VDA told Reuters on Friday.
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Registrations in Europe’s biggest car market by far slipped to 219,000 vehicles last month, according to preliminary estimates – that brought the cumulative fall in the first two months of the year to 3%, the report added.
“A difficult start to the year 2005 is emerging in the first quarter,” VDA said, according to the news agency, which noted that, in January, the German car market registered its lowest amount of new cars for that month since German reunification.
The VDA, which forecasts a sales dip this year to around 3.25 million cars, reportedly said once more that the weak domestic economy and record post-war unemployment continued to frighten car buyers away from dealer showrooms.
“Several negative factors – such as worries about jobs given unemployment far above five million people, sharply higher oil prices or the uncertain economic situation that makes consumers uncertain – have led to a stuttering auto market,” the association told Reuters, though it held out hope that new models and growing replacement demand would boost the market as the year went on.
“Exploding steel prices, higher plastic prices, stagnant markets, pricing pressure, oil, the dollar … we’ve seldom had such a stressful situation,” VDA president Bernd Gottschalk told Reuters at the Geneva motor show this week, adding 2005 would be no cake walk for car makers.
