Now that April has started, it is time to look back on a very special month. Everyone could see that car sales would fall due to the corona crisis. It is now clear how hard the blows are. Southern Europe is being hit hard.
Italy receives the hardest blow. Last month, new car registrations declined there by an alarming 86 percent. This is evident from reports from Automotive News Europe based on figures from the Italian industry association UNRAE. Ultimately, 28,057 new cars were registered in Italy in March. The national lockdown as a result of COVID-19 is of course at the root of this.
Residents of France and Spain have also been quarantined for several weeks. This is also reflected in the sales figures for those countries. In France, car sales fell by 72 percent in March, and 69 percent fewer cars were registered in Spain.
The corona virus also played a major role in European car sales in February. In Italy, a decrease of 8 percent was then noted. This is still a small contraction compared to the current situation. In February, 163,423 Italian cars were registered. Things were already going badly in France and Spain at the time, but are nowhere near current figures. France lost 2 percent (167,296) and in Spain, February 2020 accounted for a 5 percent decrease after the sale of 97,025 cars.
In the Netherlands, 23.4 percent fewer cars (29,496 in total) were registered in the past month compared to the same month last year.