Romania's 54% new car registration growth tops EU chart while markets drop across Europe

Romania had the highest increase in passenger car registrations in the first two months this year in the European Union - up 54 percent on the same period in 2011. Around 9,000 new cars were registered in Romania in the first two months of this year, which is however among the lowest totals for newly registered cars in Europe. In other countries, the number of new passenger car registrations may have been much higher than in Romania, but the year-on-year growth was much lower, while in some the markets it dropped considerably.

Portugal saw the steepest decline, with a drop of 47 percent in new passenger car registrations, to some 13,800 units. Hungary had a similar number of registrations as Romania, but its growth rate was lower – of about 31 percent, placing it second in the EU for year-on-year growth. Car owners registered 4,100 cars in Romania in February this year, up 27 percent on the same month of 2011. It was also the highest growth rate. The growth in Romania compensated for the drop in other countries, leading to an overall decrease in new car registrations of 9.7 percent in February in the EU and of 8.3 percent in the first two months. The biggest number of car registrations was in Germany – over 434,000 new car registrations in the first two months, but down 0.2 percent on the same period of 2011. In total, 1.8 million new cars were registered in the EU in the first two months this year. Volkswagen Group had the biggest slice of new registrations - some 461,000 in the first two months, followed by PSA Group - Peugeot and Citroen - some 242,000 cars. Both groups saw their new car registrations down, VW by 0.2 percent and PSA Group, by 15.5 percent. The highest increase came for Jaguar Land Rover, with 46 percent more registered cars, on the back of Land Rover, with 14,200 registrations. Then came Kia, with an increase of 31 percent and 44,700 new registrations. Read the full report from the European Association of Car Manufacturers here. editor@romania-insider.com