After the strong performance recorded last April, in May 2018 passenger car registrations in the EU only increased by 0.8%, totaling 1,393,913 units sold.
Considering the main national markets, Spain and UK posted growth (respectively +7.2% and +3.4%) and France remained stable (+0.1%), while Germany slowed down significantly (-5.8%), followed by the negative result of Italy (-2.8%, with 199,113 cars, about 85.7 thousand less compared to April 2017).
Since the beginning of the year, demand for new passenger cars in the EU grew by 2.4%, with 6,879,885 registrations overall, mainly thanks to the expansion of the new member States (+11.6%). From January to May 2018, Spain showed the highest upturn (+10.6%), followed by France (+3.5%) and Germany (+2.6%), while UK contracted (-6.8%).
In Italy, sales reached in the first five months of 2018 approximately the numbers posted in the same period last year (-0.3%, with 945,677 units).