The European car market has been affected by the recession in recent years, beginning in November 2012 when the sales figures for the European car market decreased by 10 per cent. Bloomberg have published an article that states these sales figures were the lowest ever since 1995.
The article also describes how BMW were the only car company that saw an increase in profits last year. BMW experienced a sales increase of 0.4 per cent in November 2012. Two car companies that saw an extreme drop in sales figures were French companies Peugeot and Fiat. Most car companies in Europe suffered as a result of the recession. Although they weren’t the only ones, American companies like Ford US and Chevrolet closed down their European car factories.
When the sales figures first began to fall, experts said that the recession would continue to affect the European car market for years and they were right, until last year when things finally began to look up. Last year, the BBC predicted in an article that the European car industry would start to see some improvement for the first time since the recession began.
In the article, the BBC reported how Ford Europe had announced a stabilisation in their profit loss. At the beginning of 2013, profits began to fall by 6.4 per cent but in July and August of that year sales finally started to improve.
Car sales in 2013 were 20 per cent lower than they had been in 2007, before the recession began. Despite this, industry experts are convinced that sales will start to increase this year. Three countries affected the most by the sales slump were France, Italy and Spain. However they had all seen a 7.6 per cent rise this year and things look like they will continue to improve. By the end of last year, 2.26 million cars were registered in the UK which almost the same as in 2007, before the recession began.
Stephen Jury, marketing manager at Motors.co.uk, says, ‘It’s extremely positive to see the European car market see a 5th consecutive monthly increase. These positive indications and news could mean that the car industry could be finally over its six year decline.’
This year, things are still showing signs of improving and it looks as though the European car industry could finally be out of deep water. The BBC wrote at the beginning of this year that in January, car sales in Europe increased by 5.5 per cent, after being on the rise consistently for five months.
Hopefully this means that the European car market will finally be back to how it was before the recession began. All over the world, car industries like those in the US and Japan are recovering from the recession, so let’s hope that the European car market can keep up.
