As expected, new car registrations in Europe fell in August 2019 in comparison to the same month last year. Last month’s volume totaled 1,070,276 units, down by 8.7% or 102,000 units compared to August 2018. The year on year drop can be explained by the introduction of WLTP in September 2018, which saw many carmakers and consumers push through their purchases (self-registrations and private registrations respectively) in order to get rid of the units that were not homologated or not making use of special discounts. This is even more apparent when compared to the previous year, as registrations in 2018 increased by 30% compared to August 2017.
Despite the expected drop, the results in August 2019 are not as bad as they seem. “After the impressive growth posted a year ago the drop could have been a lot bigger, so a single-digit decrease is better than expected. More importantly, last month was the second highest August of the last 10 years. In fact, the volume last month was 19% higher than in August 2017 and was the only time (excluding August 2018) that total volume exceeded 1 million units for the month,” commented Felipe Munoz, JATO’s global analyst.
For the country rankings, while the year on year comparison to 2018 may seem alarming, only four out of 27 posted a decrease compared to August 2017: Sweden, Norway, Ireland and Switzerland.
The results by segment reflect a similar trend. SUVs continued to lead the market, but their volume fell by 3% to 407,700 units. The only two segments to register a positive result were city-cars (+3%) and sports cars (+15%). However, the balance is relatively positive when compared to August 2017, when SUV volume totaled 266,000 units and had a market share of 30% compared to 38% last month. MPVs, midsize cars, executive cars and compact cars were the only segments to lose ground compared to August 2017.
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SOURCE: JATO
