MotorAuthority

Europe close to becoming world’s largest car market

Posted Mon Dec 10 2007 9:42 PM by Alex Kaufmann

Rising sales in its Eastern and Central regions may soon see Europe emerge as the world’s largest car market, surpassing the U.S. possibly by the end of the year. The U.S. has traditionally led Europe by a wide margin but sales numbers so far this year differ by only several thousand units.

Sales for the first ten months of the year stood at 13,583,559 for the U.S. and 13,572,669 for Europe, according to Automotive News. Compare this with last year, where sales in the U.S. topped out at 15,599,970, a lead of 740,000 over Europe.

The numbers reflect strong sales in the U.K. and Italy, Europe’s two biggest markets, as well as increased demand in Eastern and Central Europe. At the same time, demand in the U.S. has fallen significantly as the result of rising fuel costs and a credit crisis.

Analysts are expecting sales to reach roughly 16 million units for both markets by the end of the year and Europe to be the clear leader in 2008.

Story Tags:

• Industry

Reader Comments

• Wed Apr 16 2008 3:21 PM

  Georg says

  The europen car market is already much larger as the north american car market (US and Canada) that numbers are compületely way off. The next wrong information in the article the UK and Italian car market are NOT the largest car markets in Europe..
  
  2006 europen car sales by numbers
  Germany 3.5million
  UK 2.34million
  Italy 2.31million
  France 2.0million
  Spain 1.5million
  etc etc..
  
  the whole europen car market in 2006 was 18.104.866 sold cars (without light trucks or commercial vehicles!) Truck sales west europe only in 2006 2.45million trucks (over 7.5to)
  That numbers are officle presented by the organisation of car sellers