Europe: Western sales go up 4% in June

Jul 07, 2014

New car deliveries across the Western European region have surged 4% last month, underpinning the very slow revival of the automotive industry across the continent.

The industry data was collected and shared by LMC Automotive, showing that the growth accounted in the southern region managed to offset a decline that was registered in Europe’s biggest single market – Germany.

The numbers showed a 1.15 million vehicles tally, which in turn was sufficient for the total for the first six months to rise by 5% across the region. The automotive data provider LMC said that the annualized rate for 2014 is now forecasted at 11.93 million, rising 3.3% from the total of 11.54 million unit sales seen last year. LMC based its numbers on the data published for 13 of 17 western European countries and its own predictions for the last four – Austria, Denmark, Luxembourg and Switzerland.

Meanwhile, the main driver of sales – Germany – saw June’s sales slip 2%, with the country’s VDA auto industry association saying that if not for the missing working days, the sales would have been positive. Spain saw the biggest rise – a 24% jump over June 2013, while Great Britain posted good results as always, rising 6%, followed by Italy with a 4% increase and France with a 3% growth.

Source: Inautonews.com