After the negative result posted in September, European car market starts growing again in October (+5.9%), totaling 1,169,672 units sold. Except for the strong decline recorded by British market (-12.2%), all main national markets performed well. Spain and France led the growth with double digit numbers (both posting +13.7%), followed by Italy (+7.1%, with 157,900 cars sold, about 10.5 thousand more than in October 2016) and Germany (+3.1%). New EU member States sensibly contributed to the overall positive outcome (+20.1%).
In ten months demand for passenger cars in the EU expanded by 3.9%, totaling 12.8 million units. Looking at the five largest markets, from January to October Italy performed the best (+8.9%, with 1,692,047 units, more than 137 thousand over the same period last year), followed by Spain (+7.3%), France (+4.8%) and Germany (+2.3%), while UK fell by 4.6%.