With 181,434 new registrations, European commercial vehicle market dropped by 7.2% in the last month, as a consequence of the fact that Easter fell in April this year. All main national markets declined in all segments: UK posted the worse result (-14.9%), followed by Germany (-11.8%) and Italy (-5.9%, with 15,494 units sold, 1 thousand less than in April 2016), while Spain and France remained stable (respectively -1.0% and -0.4%).
In April 2017 light commercial vehicle registrations slowed down significantly (-7.0%), mainly due to the bad performances of UK, Germany and Italy. Both trucks and heavy trucks recorded similar negative figures (-9.8% and -9.9%), despite the good results of both Italian and British markets. Only exception was bus and coach segment, which increased by 5.5%, thanks to the extraordinary expansion of the Spanish market.
From January to April demand for new commercial vehicles in the EU grew by 3.8%, totaling 788,181 units. Amongst the 5 major markets, Spain performed best (+14.5%), followed by Italy (+8.2%, with 66,359 registrations, 5 thousand over the same period last year), France (+6.7%) and Germany (+2.0%). In the first four months UK posted a slight decline (-3.1%).
