In the last month, European passenger car market expanded by 87.3%, with 1,062,446 units overall. This was the result of the comparison with March 2020, seriously affected by the restrictions introduced to face the COVID-19 emergency.
Among the main national markets, Italy posted the highest numbers (+497.2%, with 169,684 vehicles registered, over 141 thousand more than in March 2020), followed by France (+191.7%), Spain (+128.0%) and Germany (+35.9%).
From January to March, demand for new passenger cars in Europe increased by 3.2%, with 2,560,330 units sold. Thanks to the exceptionally strong result recorded in March, in the first quarter of 2021 passenger car registrations grew by 28.7% in Italy (with 446,978 cars, nearly 100 thousand over the same period last year) and by 21.1% in France, while both Spain and Germany kept contracting (respectively -14.9% and -6.4%).