The analysis also shows that three brands made sales after not having delivered even a single car in the same time in 2011.

On the other hand, 24 brands saw sales go down again.

Out of the 17 brands that posted growth last year, only two are volume brands, Ford and Hyundai, which ranked 16th and 17th, after an increase of 18.5% to more than 1,900 vehicles and 6% to a little more than 850 units.

Top brands by growth are Lancia, DAF, Land Rover, Volvo and Infiniti, which increased by up to 216% in the first four months of the year. Lancia sales rose by six cars to almost 20, partly because the Italian brand expanded last year when it added the Chrysler models.

While premium brands posted growth, as most of the sales go to companies, the auto brands that rely on consumers and clunkers program for sales saw decline, again. The most serious declines of car brands in this case were those of smart, Seat, and Chevrolet, Honda and Opel. Dacia sold over 16% fewer cars, i.e. almost 5,800.

Maserati, Jeep and Volvo Trucks did not sell any vehicle in the first four months of 2011, while this year they sold four, 40 and 145 units according to APIA.

The continued decline of the volume brands comes at a time when after one and a half months since the start of the new government-backed clunkers program the Environmental Fund Administration has almost run out of vouchers while less than 15% of them have actually been used to buy a new car.

The issuing of only 30,000 clunkers program vouchers and the announcements about a potential freeze of this scheme led to a tripling of voucher prices on the free market.

More than 22,000 cars older than ten years were scrapped during the first six weeks since the start of the clunkers program, but fewer than 3,300 tickets were used to buy 1,100 new cars, considering three vouchers worth almost EUR2,700 together can be used for one car.

Therefore, since there are almost 19,000 vouchers still traded on the market, they might be used to buy more than 6,300 cars, which is a month of sales’ worth.

By comparison, 6,650 new cars were sold on the local market in April, a decline by more than 21% on the same time of last year. Compared with March, sales were merely 14% up. Last year in April, when the program started, the growth on the previous month was almost 40%, to 8,500 cars.

Henrik Nenzen, general manager of Ford Romania and also the official in charge with sales on the local market, says at least 5,000 individual customers will be lost this year, if the clunkers program stays at the current level, which means the 100,000 car mark will not be reached and maybe 95,000 will be sold at best.

The low number of purchases, competitors on the market explain, is because of the high price of vouchers traded. Whereas a voucher would cost 700 to 1,500 lei (EUR158 to EUR338) in 2010 and 2011, now the price has gone up to more than RON2,600 in some cases. Therefore whereas people could save up to EUR2,000 buying three vouchers from the market, now they can save no more than EUR800. (EUR1=RON4.4421)

(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)

Top brands by growth in first four months
Brand Sales in first four months (vehicles) Trend (%)
1 Lancia 19 216.7
2 DAF 113 189.7
3 Land Rover 226 133.0
4 Volvo 187 122.6
5 Infiniti 18 80.0
6 Alfa Romeo 67 52.3
7 MINI 52 48.6
8 Renault Trucks 99 43.5
9 BMW 599 34.6
10 Jaguar 8 33.3
11 Audi 663 32.3
12 Porsche 39 30.0
13 Scania 112 28.7
14 MAN 241 26.2
15 Mercedes-Benz 959 19.9
Source: APIA Highest decline in January-April
Brand Sales in first four months (vehicles) Trend (%)
1 Irisbus Iveco 11 -73.2
2 smart 3 -72.7
3 Seat 194 -55.4
4 Chevrolet 385 -46.5
5 Honda 138 -45.9
6 Opel 717 -42.4
7 Fiat 599 -38.4
8 Mitsubishi 282 -36.1
9 Citroen 460 -22.6
10 Suzuki 512 -19.0
11 Kia 290 -17.6
12 Lexus 15 -16.7
13 Dacia 5,781 -16.4
14 Mazda 147 -15.5
15 Renault 1,751 -15.5
Source: APIA
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