October figures for European commercial vehicle registrations from ACEA confirm that the introduction of Euro 4 legislation at the beginning of the month did not have a big impact on the overall market.

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There had been concerns that customers would bring forward purchases ahead of the new legislation but in fact, although this has happened to some extent, the effect has not been significant in most markets.


Heavy commercial vehicle (over 16 tonnes) sales in western were down 1.7% in October to 19,975 units. The UK and German markets did record significant declines (-44.1% and -9.8% respectively), attributed to the impact of the new legislation. However, the decline was offset by market increases in Spain (+25%), Italy (+5.8%) and France (+4.8%). Apart from Austria (–9.7%), Portugal (–44.6%) and Denmark (–48%). All the remaining EU15 countries posted growth. EFTA countries further improved their registrations by 27.4%.


Cumulative figures show that the Western European remains on a positive trend (+6.6%) compared with the same period last year. Only three EU15 countries suffered losses while the remaining markets recorded positive growth.


176,756 new Light Commercial Vehicles (LCV) were registered in October 2006 in Western Europe, representing a 15.3% increase compared to the same month last year. One extra working day with respect to October last year (two days in Greece) across the whole region positively contributed to this result. Only Germany experienced a slowdown (–1.7%) while France (+26.2%), Spain (+17.6%), Italy (+12.2%) and the UK (+9.4%) enjoyed sound improvement. All the remaining markets posted growth, ranging from +4.1% in Austria to +47.7% in the Netherlands. ACEA said that the situation in the Netherlands remained distorted by the last year’s strong decline in new LCV registrations following the introduction of the BMP taxation on light commercial vehicles for private use in July 2005.

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Cumulative numbers for the first three quarters of the year showed an increase of 5.0% relative to the same period last year (+4.9% in the EU15). EFTA countries grew by 10.4%.


The market for new buses and coaches in western Europe eased in October 2006 (–7.7%), 2,215 new buses and coaches sold. Demand in EFTA countries fell by 24.8%. All five main markets posted decreases: France (–4.5%), Spain (–6%), Germany (–11.3%), Italy (–15.6%) and the UK (–26.7%). However, cumulative figures for Western Europe are up four percent. France (+10.7%), Germany (+10.4%) and the UK (+7.9%) posted growth, while Italy (–2.8%) and Spain (–0.6%) slowed down.