Sales of new cars in Germany, Europe’s biggest market, grew 3.8% to 284,400 vehicles last month compared with 273,900 in April 2012. It was the first increase for six months and the biggest since December 2011 according to industry data.
Sales were also up 11% in Spain, a figure that surprised analysts, but were down 5.2% in France to 157,900 units and 11% in Italy where 116,200 new cars were sold.
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The upturn in Germany and Spain has led some analysts to suggest that the six-year slide in sales in Europe’s key markets outside the UK has bottomed out.
Germany’s VDIK industry group said there were “growing signs that consumer confidence is firming up”, adding that April’s upturn “could mark the beginning of a long-awaited stabilisation”. Even so, the VDA has lowered its forecast for 2013 sales to 2.9-3m units from over 3m earlier. Sales last year reached 3.1m.
In Spain, year on year sales were up 11% to 62,300 from 56,000 in 2012 but Easter fell in March this year and April last year so there were more selling days last month. Government subsidies also helped boost figures with the VW group’s domestic Seat brand recording a 47% jump and Volkswagen an increase of 32%.
In France, sales were down 5.2% at 157,900 units, a much slower rate of decline than the 16% recorded in March, according to industry group CCFA. Hyundai-Kia were the big winners, posting a 17% increase while GM (down 19%), Ford (17%) PSA Peugeot-Citroën (12%) and Renault (3%) continued to suffer.
In Italy, where two months of political deadlock ended on 30 April, year on year sales were down 11% at 116,200 units.
The country’s dealer group Federauto is pressing the new Rome administration to help the industry, describing the new car market as “a very sick patient”.
But Gian Primo Quagliano, head of Centro Studi Promotor, an automotive research institute, told Reuters: “We’re seeing a glimmer of recovery. The end of this exasperating political crisis could mean a return to optimism.”
