June 2016 posted another remarkable result for passenger car registrations in Europe, marking the 34th consecutive month of growth and increasing by 6.9% over the same month last year. EU market totaled 1,459,508 units, nearly as many as in June 2007, before the crisis affected the whole industry.
Looking at the major markets, Italy once more posted the highest upturn (+11.9%, with 165,208 units, about 17.5 thousand more compared to June 2015), followed by Spain (+11.2%) and Germany (+8.3%). French market showed no significant change (+0.8%) while registrations in the UK fell slightly as a consequence of a drop in private sales (-0.8%).
The first semester of 2016 closed with 7,842,965 registrations in the EU, for an overall expansion of 9.4%, sustained by all main national markets. Italy showed double digit figures (+19.2%, with 1,041,854 registrations, 167 thousand over the same period last year) together with Spain (+12.2%), followed by France (+8.3%), Germany (+7.1%) and UK (+3.2%).