Passenger car: registrations down 2.7% over January-April

Brussels, 17/05/2011 – In April, demand for new cars in the EU* was 4.1% less than in the same month last year. New registrations amounted to 1,089,118 units. April 2010 counted one more working day across the region.

Four months into 2011, registrations totaled 4,674,457 units, or 2.7% less than over the same period a year earlier.

April results showed a contraction of the major markets, except for Germany (+2.6%), leading to an overall 4.1% downturn. Demand was down 2.2% in Italy, 7.4% in the UK, 11.1% in France and 23.3% in Spain. Germany was the biggest market with 266,251 new registrations, followed by France (169,757), Italy (157,309), the UK (137,746) and Spain (71,808).

From January to April, growth prevailed in two thirds of the markets but the downturn recorded in the UK (8.5%), Italy (-19.0%) and Spain (-26.3%) resulted in a 2.7% decline in the EU* demand. Germany, the largest market, registered over 1 million units in the first four months of 2011, or 10.7% more than in the same period last year, followed by France with 817,211 new cars (+4.0%).