August best month in years for car constructors

The European car constructors have had the best month in over a year last August, with car registrations going up 7.7% compared to August 2010. Last month, 753,709 cars were registered throughout the EU.  For the whole year however, the total of 8,888,793 is still 1.3% lower.

All major markets grow

August was only the second month with a substantial rise in car registrations this year, after May’s +7.1% – the steepest crash coming in June with a -8.1%. All major markets were on the up: Italy (+1.5%), France (+3.1%), Spain (+5.9%), the UK (+7.3%) and especially Germany (+18.3%). The Baltic countries Estonia (+85.5%), Lithuania (+72.4%) and Latvia (+40.1%) were the best performing markets, while only Ireland (-35.6%) and Poland (-4.1%) performed considerably worse than last year. With a +0.7% rise, Belgium was one of the slowest growing markets in the EU last month.

Mixed picture for January-August period

Car constructors will have been delighted with the recovery, after July (even with a -2.0% drop) was the fourth best month of the year and the year total still on a -1.3%. Germany extends its huge lead as major European car market: in the first eight months of 2011, 2.1 million cars were registered there (+11.2%), while France remains stable in second place (1.5 million cars, +0.4%) and Italy’s sales crash -12.0% to 1.2 million. The UK is still fourth (despite a -6.1% loss), but now only trails Italy by less than 2,000 cars – compared to over 88,000 for the January to July period. 

In Greece (-38.1%), Portugal (-22.5%) and Spain (-22.2%), the economic crisis dealt hard blows to car registration figures. Most countries are in the +0% to +15% region, but the Baltic countries see their care sale rocket by +76% (Latvia), +86% (Estonia) or even +90% (Lithuania). The Netherlands are fifth with +19% (410,923 new cars), while Belgium remains stable at 399,119 (+0.5%).