Passenger Car Registrations Show Mixed Results

Passenger car registrations across the 15 established European Union states are showing signs of a slight decrease compared with 12 months ago, according to figures released by the ACEA on March 15. Throughout this entire region a total of 975,666 new passenger cars were registered in February 2007, a 3.5 per cent dip compared with February 2006 registrations. The scenario in the UK market was in line with this trend, with February 2007’s new car registrations – 73,586 new passenger cars – 3.2 per cent lower than the number recorded a year before. However new car registrations are traditionally low in the UK during February due to the March number plate changeover, and it must be pointed out that combined January/February 2007 new car registrations totalled 239,189, a 2.5 per cent increase on 2006 and bucking EU15 trends, where a 1.5 per cent decrease was recorded.

New European Union member states continued their pattern of increasing new car registration numbers. During January/February 2007 this region experienced a 13.1 per cent rise on the previous year with 146,195 new passenger car registrations, and in selected markets there were some huge changes – new car registrations in Estonia were up 43.2 per cent on the previous year, and those in Latvia increased by a significant 89.7 per cent over February 2006 figures.

Vehicles built by the Volkswagen group – Volkswagen, Audi, Seat and Skoda – continued to hold the largest share of the European market, but it was Japanese manufacturers that showed the greatest increase in market share. When comparing February 2007 results with those of February 2006, the Toyota group’s European market share showed a 13.1 per cent increase to 6.4 per cent of the total market, and Honda, although still a small player in Europe, increased its market share by 22 per cent to 1.8 per cent of the total. The biggest loser during this period was DaimlerChrysler, who suffered a 7.6 per cent decline in sales, mainly due to plummeting registrations of its Smart line, which showed a 52.8 per cent drop in registrations compared with February 2006.