Following a slight decline in July (-1.4%), which put an end to the positive trend lasted 34 consecutive months, in August 2016 new passenger car registrations in the EU grew by 10.0%, totaling 819,126 units sold. A very encouraging result, also taking into account that August generally is the weakest month in terms of volume because of the summer holidays.
Looking at the major markets, Italy posted the highest upturn (+20.1%, with 71,576 registrations, 12 thousand over August 2015), followed with double digit numbers by Spain (+14.6%) and by the good performances of Germany (+8.3%), France (+6.7) and UK (+3.3).
From January to August European passenger car market totaled 9,787,760 units, expanding by 8.1% in eight months. Growth was supported by all main national markets, first of all the Italian (+17.4%, with 1,251,806 cars registered, 185 thousand more compared to the same period last year) and Spanish (+11.3%), followed by France (+6.1%), Germany (+5.7%) and UK (+2.8%).