European car sales plunged 27 per cent in January to the lowest level in two decades as the global recession and tight credit markets reduced demand for General Motors, Renault SA and Bayerische Motoren Werke AG models.
Registrations fell to 958,517 last month from 1.31 million a year earlier, the Brussels-based European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association said in a statement today.
In 2008, sales fell 7.8 per cent, the biggest decline since 1993. “The markets are even worse than the numbers indicate, because of all the discounting that’s going on,” said Simon Empson, managing director of UK automotive retailing website Broadspeed.com.
The January drop was the steepest of a nine-month contraction that caught automakers off guard and forced them to suspend production to clear inventories of unsold vehicles.
The global economic crisis all but decimated auto markets in Iceland, Ireland and Latvia.
In Iceland, where the economy capsized after the island nation’s biggest banks failed to refinance their debt, sales collapsed to 170 vehicles, a drop of 88 per cent.
The Irish market plunged 67 per cent to fewer than 16,000 cars and sport utility vehicles, while registrations in Latvia totalled 494, a decline of 78 per cent.
Major markets also suffered declines. In Germany, Europe’s largest economy, sales fell 14 per cent to 189,385 vehicles.
Deliveries in the UK, where GM and Ford Motor are raising prices to offset the weak pound, slumped 31 per cent to 112,087. France was the least-affected big market, as sales fell 7.9 per cent to 149,372 cars.
Bloomberg