Demand for new passenger cars in the Eu fell by 8.4% in December 2018, marking the fourth consecutive month of contraction, with 998,503 units sold. All main national markets posted negative results: France -14.5%; Germany -6.7%; UK -5.5%; Spain -3.5%. Only exception was Italy, with a growth of 2.0% (with 124,078 cars registered, nearly 2.4 thousand more compared to December 2017).
In 12 months, passenger car registrations in the Eu remained stable compared to 2017 (+0.1%), as a consequence of the last four months of the year, when sales went down because of the introduction of the new WLTP tests last August. 2018 though marked the 5th consecutive year of growth, with 15,158,874 units overall.
Looking at the 5 major markets, Spain performed the best (+7.0%) followed by France (+3.0%); Germany remained more or less stable (-0.2%) while Italy (-3.1%, with 1,910,025 registrations, over 61 thousand less than in 2017) and UK (-6.8%) contracted significantly. On the other hand Central European countries grew by 8.0% during 2018.