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New car registrations: part two of the tragedy
Anyone who thought last year that 2020 was forgettable, but that everything would be better in 2021, is currently being proven wrong: the European car market recorded severe slumps at the start of the year.
New car registrations: part two of the tragedy
It was a brief moment of hope when sales figures returned to normal somewhat towards the end of 2020 and some experts predicted a recovery in the European new car market in 2021. Now, however, it's time to go back to the start, or in this case, a false start: January was a complete disaster! New registrations fell by 24 percent across the EU, from around 956,447 to 726,491 vehicles. This made January 2021 the worst opening month of a year ever.
The reason for this is clear: the various measures to combat the corona pandemic in the various countries with numerous lockdowns have put a massive strain on business. But there was also something else: Many markets simply had fewer business days because the holidays fell differently this year. The legendary quote from the former German football player Jürgen Wegmann inevitably comes to mind, who once said in a game analysis: “First we had no luck, and then we had bad luck too”.
Spain reports a decline of 51.5 percent
Almost all 27 EU markets recorded declines in the double-digit percentage range year-on-year; in Germany this was as high as 31.1 percent and in Spain it was an almost unbelievable 51.5 percent! France fared best of the major markets and got off relatively lightly with a minus of 5.8 percent in new registrations in January. An island of the blessed was Sweden, which was not only the only country to achieve growth, but also a whopping increase of 22.5 percent. In Austria, which had a hard lockdown, there was a minus of 38.4 percent. The exact figures for all EU countries can be found on the Website of the industry association ACEA for download.
Overall, January's results cannot be glossed over by saying that the bar from the previous year was particularly high. Although the corona crisis had not yet broken out in January 2020 and there was no talk of lockdowns, January 2020, which is now used as a comparison period, was by no means a good month: in January 2020, new registrations were already 7.5 percent below the level of January 2019.