Europe close to becoming worlds biggest car market

[forza2.0]

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 the 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 leading in 2008.

Automotive News

Technically Europe is already the biggest car market ...

Mind that the figures mentioned are those of sales in EU & EFTA (Switzerland, Norway, Iceland) countries, but do not include other European countries like Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia (incl Kosovo), Macedonia, Albania, Moldova. When this markets are included (and perhaps even Ukranian & Belorussian - these two countries are geographically a part of Europe as well) joint Euro market outsells the US one already.

 

[Jim Prower]

Oh, you'll only get it for a moment...then China will take over...