ACEA: Romania, the most dynamic car market in the EU

By Emea Riga
Romania was the second most dynamic car market in Europe, in 2019 announced the Association of European Automobile Manufacturers (ACEA). Sales of new cars in Europe (EU plus EFTA countries) increased by 1.2% in 2019 compared to 2018. The most dynamic car market (excluding Lithuania, a small country) was Romania, which registered an advance of 23.4%, according to ACEA. Romania was followed by Hungary, with a growth of 15.6% and Greece, 10.3%. A disastrous situation was registered in Czechia, where sales fell by 4.4%. In Poland there were modest sales (4.5%), as well as in Slovakia (3.6%), Bulgaria (3.0%).
A total of 15.805 million cars were registered between January and December 2019 in the European Union and EFTA countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland), compared with 15.624 million cars registered in 2018. ACEA stresses that, in the case of the European Union, 2019 it was the sixth consecutive year of the increase of the registrations of cars, that reached 15.3 million units last year. With regard to the major European car markets, Germany registered the highest growth (5%), followed by France (1.9%) and Italy (0.3%). In contrast, the car markets in Spain (minus 4.8%) and the UK (minus 2.4%) registered a decline in 2019.
In Romania, in 2019, 161,562 cars were registered, an increase of 23.4% compared to 130,919 units in 2018. This, after, in December of last year, the Romanian car market registered an annual growth rate of 48, 3% up to 13,773 units.
With regard to the major car manufacturers, in 2019 the largest increase in car sales (4.8%) was recorded by the Daimler and Toyota groups. Renault group sales posted a modest increase of only 0.9%, to 1.654 million cars, while Dacia car registrations in the EU and EFTA countries registered a double-digit advance (10.1%), up to 581,543 units in 2019. Last year, the Dacia brand controlled 3.7% of the European car market, up from 3.4% in 2018. The Dacia company was taken over by Renault in 1999. Relaunched in 2004 with the Logan model, Dacia has become a notorious player in the European car market.