The main driver of demand in the region was the countries of Central Europe, where sales rose by 4.6% last month. Among the five leading car markets of the European Union, positive dynamics were shown by Spain (+2.6%), Italy (+1.5%) and France (+0.4%) compared to April 2018, while in the UK (-4.1%) and Germany (-1.1%) buyer activity fell.
The leader among the national EU markets in April was again Germany — 310,715 new cars were sold there.
France took second place: over the month, its residents purchased 188,196 cars.
The top three is closed by Italy with passenger car sales of 174,412 units.
Among European concerns, VW Group traditionally holds first place — over the month, the company sold 323,832 cars in EU markets, which is 3.7% less than in April last year.
PSA Group comes second with 215,382 cars sold, which exceeds the result of a year ago by 1.5%.
Renault Group takes third place — 143,123 units, an increase of 1.8%.
Overall, in the first four months of 2019, demand for new passenger cars in the European Union decreased by 2.6% — a total of 5.3 million units were registered. The markets of Germany and France remained almost at the level of last year, while in Italy (-4.6%), Spain (-4.5%) and the UK (-2.7%) registrations fell compared to the same period in 2018.
