Recession hits European car sales
Car sales in Europe fell by 17% in the first quarter of 2009, although its scrappage scheme has made Germany the exception
- guardian.co.uk, Thursday 16 April 2009 12.14 BST
- Article history
Car sales in Europe fell by 17.2% in the first quarter of this year, underlining the damage to consumer confidence inflicted by the recession and credit crunch.
Figures from ACEA, the pan-European auto industry body, showed today that sales fell 9% last month, with sales in eastern Europe down 25% and in the west by 8%.
The slump in new car sales would have been even more dramatic without the scrappage incentives on offer in about a dozen EU countries to persuade consumers to trade in their old models for fuel-efficient vehicles.
In Germany, where the government has just agreed to extend a scheme offering €2,500 (£2,200) per consumer in the face of a headlong rush to showrooms, the market has grown this year – it is up 18% and is the only one in western Europe to experience growth. In March, sales were 35% higher than a year ago.
Spain, which has a more modest version of the scheme, saw a decline of 43.1% and Britain, which has yet to adopt a scrappage scheme despite months of industry pressure, one of almost 30%.
Italy and France, which both have such schemes, saw falls of 19% and 4% respectively. In Ireland, the worst hit of the 16 eurozone economies, sales fell 65% and Iceland faced a 91.3% drop.
The overall European market in the first three months of 2009 saw sales fall from 4.15m vehicles a year earlier to 3.43m – a less severe decline than in the US, where the Big Three firms are fighting for survival.
In eastern Europe, both Poland and the Czech Republic, which are weathering the recessionary storm relatively well, saw a growth in sales of 2.5% and 0.9% last month, with Slovakia, protected within the eurozone, showing a jump of 18.2% after introducing a scrappage scheme.
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