In December, almost all leading car markets of the European Union showed a decline, with the only exception being Spain, where sales grew by 6.2%. The British market, meanwhile, has been falling for nine consecutive months — in the last month of the year, registrations there decreased by 14.4%.
Germany still holds the status of the largest car market in Europe: 253,950 passenger cars were sold there in a month.
France took the second position — residents of the country purchased 193,372 cars in December.
The top three is closed by the UK with 152,473 cars sold.
Among European automakers, the first place, as usual, was taken by VW Group, whose sales in the European market reached 254,091 cars, but compared to December last year, this result was 4% lower.
The second line is held by PSA Group with sales volume of 167,087 cars — this is 61.1% more than in December 2016, which is explained by the purchase of Opel and Vauxhall brands from GM.
The third indicator in terms of the number of cars sold is RENAULT Group — 141,142 units, which is 4.5% less. At the same time, based on the results of the entire year, RENAULT Group took second place, selling 1,500,635 cars.
In total, over 15 million new passenger cars were registered in the EU countries in 2017 — this is 3.4% more than a year earlier, and growth has continued for the fourth year in a row. Almost all major European markets contributed to the overall increase: Italy showed +7.9%, Spain +7.7%, France +4.7%, Germany +2.7%. It is also worth noting the dynamics of the new EU member states, where registrations rose by 12.8% over the year.
