You could have counted on your fingers in advance that European car sales would again take a big dive in February. The European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) is now releasing figures showing that again fewer new passenger cars were sold last month than last year.
In the European Union, 771,486 new passenger cars were registered in February. That sounds like a decent fleet and in fact it is, of course. It is 19.3 percent less than the 956,430 copies registered in the European Union in the same month last year.
Sales of new passenger cars were lower in almost all EU countries compared to the same month last year, although Ireland and Sweden recorded pluses of 4.9 and 5.3 percent respectively. Lithuania (-47.8 percent), Denmark (-33.9 percent), Portugal (-59 percent) and Spain (-38.4 percent) were hit hardest. The car market has also seen clearly better times in Germany (-19 percent), France (-20.9 percent) and Belgium (-21.9 percent).
The Volkswagen Group saw its sales fall by 17.4 percent in February. Stellantis also had a bad month with a sales decrease of -21.7. Groupe Renault was hit even harder (-27.9 percent), the same applies to Jaguar Land Rover (-30.4 percent), Mitsubishi (-58.3 percent) and Honda (-43 percent). Daimler saw its sales fall by 19.3 percent in February, Toyota and Lexus by 11.4 percent and Groupe Hyundai (Hyundai and Kia) recorded a sales decline of 18.7 percent behind its name. At the BMW Group, the damage was still somewhat limited with a decrease of 9.1 percent, as well as at Volvo (-2.6 percent). Nissan and Mazda sold 36.5 and 22.4 percent fewer passenger cars in the European Union respectively in February.
Car sales in the European Union were also significantly lower in January than in the same month of 2020. In the first two months of this year, the sales counter for new passenger cars was 21.7 percent lower than in the same period last year.