New car registrations fell 59.5% in Romania in the eight months through August down to 81,824 units, one of the biggest market contractions in European Union, according to the statistics of European Automobile Manufacturers' Association.
The sharpest drops year-to-date were to be found in Ireland (-63.7%), Czech Republic (-66.8%), Latvia (-80.2%), Lithuania (-69.4%) and in Romania (-59.5%).
Romanian car market slipped two positions in the EU in Jan-Aug 2009, now ranking 14th.
The EU auto market contracted by 7.9% in the period under review, to 9.32 million passenger cars, from 10,128,865 a year-ago period.
New car registrations fell 49.7% in Hungary to 54,097 units. Italy has seen a 7.4% decline to 1.42 million units while UK market dropped 21.5% to 1.1 mln units and Spain’s 32% to 600,000 cars.
Driven by fleet renewal incentives, Germany recorded a 26.8% plus. Austria increased 5.5% to 221,133 units, France upped 1.1% to 1,430,391 cars, Slovakia grew 22.3% to 57,571, Czech Republic upped 9.0% to 105,552 and Poland recorded a 1.0% increase to 214,536 units.
As for the number of new registrations of Dacia cars in Europe, it jumped 30.8% in the eight months into the year.
