The local auto market will go down by 30% to 40% in the fourth quarter of this year, too, companies in the industry say, and therefore car registrations will reach about 66,000 in 2012, 20% fewer than in 2011.
“We hope to see the decline slow down in the last quarter. We’re not expecting things to be like they were in the summer, I’d say it will be more like the trend in the first half of the year,” said Dana Cortina, general manager of Porsche Inter Auto (PIA), the auto retail division of Porsche Holding in Romania.
New car registrations fell by more than 30% in September, to less than 4,700 cars, according to the statistics of the Interior Ministry’s Driving Licenses and Vehicle Registration Department (DRPCIV).
Last month’s decline is the second highest this year after August, when the auto market dropped 42%. Car registrations in the third quarter were down 34% on the year-ago period, while the second quarter decline stood at 12%.
Car registrations fell by 12% in the first nine months to 49,100 units. If the same pace maintains in the fourth quarter, registrations will have reached a little more than 65,000 cars, down 80% compared to record year 2007, when almost 316,000 new cars were registered.
Thomas Dubruel, Dacia’s commercial manager, says that the larger decline in the second part of the year was also due to the Environment Ministry issuing only 45,000 clunkers program vouchers, instead of the 60,000 promised and the 120,000 issued last year.
The number of clunkers scrapped via the government-backed program reached 42,700 at the end of last month out of a total of 45,000 tickets, according to the Environment Fund Administration statistics.
However, a little more than 9,900 new cars were bought, which means almost 13,000 vouchers are still traded on the market, enough to buy 4,000 new cars. The clunkers program therefore accounted for less than 20% of the new car registrations in January-September this year.
On the other hand, registrations of premium cars increased in the first nine months. BMW for instance, saw a 28% rise in the number of cars registered to 1,600 units, while registrations of Audi cars went up by 31% to almost 1,360 units, and Mercedes-Benz by 2% to 1,224 units.
“The customers’ attitude changed during the crisis, as they became more concerned about careful cost management. The fourth quarter is the strongest for BMW traditionally, and December is generally one of the best months of the year. We hope to keep the tradition this year, too,” said Cristian Vlasin, sales manager of BMW Group Romania.
PIA will open the largest Porsche Romania center on the local market and one of the largest in Europe, which will integrate Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini and Porsche showrooms. The investment in the 10,000 square meter center stands at EUR15 million, the largest such investment in Romania in the last twenty years.
“Our investment projects are always implemented with long-term goals in mind. The opening of the new center in Pipera (northern Bucharest i.e.) has to do with how we structure our brand portfolio and the constant results on the luxury car market rather than optimism for 2013. Judging from the past few years’ results, we expect 2013 to be a difficult year, too, but we’re already used to hardships,” Dana Cortina said.
Valeriu Zaharia, sales and marketing manager for Mercedes-Benz cars, says that since legal entities account for more than 90% of the customers of premium brands like Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi, the clunkers program or the lack of wage raises did not have that much of an influence on their sales.
“The political situation caused a lot of reluctance about purchases. Next year we expect stabilization, more confidence in the development of what was lost during the crisis and a rebound of the economy,” Valeriu Zaharia said.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)