The last year Romania was Dacia’s biggest market was 2008, after which it lost the top spot to France and Germany. Moreover, it even dropped below third and fourth places (Spain and Italy) this year.
Romania first stopped being one of the three most important markets for Dacia in July, when first half statistics showed it ranked sixth, behind Turkey (fifth place).
At the time, Constantin Stroe, Automobile Dacia’s vice-president said that Romania dropping so low in the ranking was a devastating reality, which could foretell ‘bad things’ if nothing was done to support the local automotive market.
The drop in the ranking comes as a result of the decline of its home market, which came close to the 2000 level, considering car registrations are down by almost 80% from 2007 or 2008.
Registrations were nearly 12% lower in the first two months of 2012 than in the year-ago period, while sales shrank by almost 20%, according to the statistics of the Association of Automotive Manufacturers and Importers (APIA).
The retail market is not only dwindling, it is on the verge of dying, after having dropped 40% from 2011, due to the lack of clunkers program vouchers, while sales of fleets were almost flat. There were 120,000 such vouchers last year, while this year only 45,000 were made available, which are not enough to help the retail market, said Thomas Dubruel, general manager of Renault Commercial Roumanie (Renault/Dacia/Nissan).
He added sales of fleets accounted for a lower percentage of the total Dacia sales than the market average, because the company’s main target is retail customers.
One of the countries where Dacia’s sales are on the rise is Spain, a market that witnessed an almost 36% decline in the first nine months of the year. Dacia saw about 1,900 cars registered in Spain last month, up 63% and 14,200 in the first ten months, an increase of 18%. On the other hand, registrations of Dacia cars dropped by almost 80% in the Netherlands in October, to 47 units.
Dacia’s sales in Germany are still consolidated with Renault’s in statistics.
Achim Schaible, head of Renault Germany was quoted by Business Week as saying that Dacia would see 45,000 units sold this year and next year’s target was 50,000. Sales of the brand went up by 12.5% in the first nine months of the year, on a market that declined 2%.
Dacia’s growth came from sales of Lodgy and Dokker models made in Morocco. In 2013 it will come from the models made in Mioveni, southern Romania, the new Logan and Sandero, including the right-hand drive Sandero for the UK market.
The carmaker’s new car registrations in France, its main market, dropped 22.6% in October to 6,626 units, on a market that fell 7.8% to 162,400 vehicles, according to the French carmakers association.
Dacia car registrations in France declined 5.1% in the first ten months of the year to 67,454 units, while the overall French car market decreased 13.3%, to 1.59 million units. Dacia registrations on the French market fell 14.1% in September.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)