We had anticipated these figures using Indicio, with a very low margin of error of 6% in this forecast. Still hindered by supply chains disruptions and the war in Ukraine, passenger car registrations decreased by 20.5% compared to March 2021, but increased compared to February and January 2022.
Good dynamics again this month on the Central and Eastern Europe markets with the Romanian market noticing a 40.2 % passenger car registrations increase from last year. Slovakia, Bulgaria, Croatia and Ireland also saw double-digit growth from March 2021.
The downtrend seen in 2022 continued on the four biggest markets: Spain (-30.2%), Italy (-29.7%), France (-19.5%) and Germany (-17.5%).
Only Hyundai, Mazda and Honda managed not to see a decrease in registrations compared to March 2021. Other manufacturers saw a clear decline, with for example:
- Volkswagen Group: -24.3%
- Stellantis: -32.9%
- Renault: -14.1%
- Ford: -16.1%
- Volvo: -35.8%
- Toyota: -12.2%
How does April look?
We forecasted the European passenger car market using Indicio. We built 28 models composed of 13 leading indicators on data from 2003 to 2022. Indicio weighted each model depending on performances at each horizon to create an aggregate forecast. We, therefore, anticipate another decline with 769k passenger car registrations in April, which represents a 10.7% YOY decrease compared to April 2021.
