June was the best month on the past six years for the Romanian car market.
Sales on the Romanian market are still fueled by purchases made by companies which covered 77% in the first half, down from 81% in January-May. This is due to the clunkers program, which has boosted sales to individuals.
APIA notes a tendency for used car imports, which grew 14% on the year in the first six months, and over 76% of imported second-hand cars (around 85,600 units) are older than eight years (qualifying a car for scrapping under the national clunkers program).
In June, there were 34,790 vehicles produced in Romania, 1.9% more than in May, and six-month output reached 212,433 units, up 0.9% compared to the first half of 2014. Of these, 186,107 were made by Dacia and 26,326 by Ford.
The best selling car makes in the first half of the year were Dacia (17,010 units, 37.2% of the total), followed by Volkswagen (4,355 units, 9.5%), Skoda (4,056 units, 8.9%), Renault (2,878 units, 6.3%), Ford (2,790 units, 6.1%) and Opel (1,607 units, 3.5%).
By country of origin, 35.4% of the cars sold in Romania in the first half of the year were locally made, 16.8% were imported from Germany, 9.7% from Czech Republic, 7.8% from Spain and 7% from France.
Sales of locally made cars increased 29% on the year in the first half, while imported car sales grew 10.3%.