All 40 Europeans car markets sales dropped 5% in August. Russia overtook Germany as N° 1.

Thanks to its database and the network of local correspondents,focus2move.com is now able to release sales data for the entire Europe, from Portugal to Ukraine. The countries included are not only those inside the European Community - as released by ACEA association - but also others, such as Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Belarus, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine.

Moreover, data includes cars and light commercial vehicles in order to give a more precise view of the True European light passenger markets and allow a better comparison with the rest of the World. Indeed, others sources reports on "Europe" usually do not include LCV, which counts around 13% of total.

In August, total vehicles (cars plus LCV) sold in Europe were 1.08 million, due to low seasonality of the month. Market declined 5.1%, following the 3.1% increase reported in July and the 5.7% lost in first half.

Russia overtook Germany and became the largest European car market with 231.915 units, although in the first half 2013 there was a contraction of the car market. In July the Russian Government introduced a new credit program to sustain the car's sales.

Germany was still the market leader considering the cumulated sales (2.07 million units), but in August the sales decreased 5.8% from a year ago and in the first six months of the current year the sales dropped by 8%, while in July the year-on-year comparison was positive (2.9%).

France was in 3rd place in August and in 4th year to date. In first half, cars registrations declined by 11% from the same period year ago, while in July the market rose 1.2% from year ago.

The British market kept the robust growing trend and, following the positive result reached in July, increased by 16.0% in August from year ago and by 10.1% in first half. The market is now very close to the pre 2008 financial crisis volumes.

Turkish market outpaced Italy and Spain, confirming in August the positive trend shown so far this year, with 65.043 sales, up 11.9% from August 2012. First half was positive too (+12.1%) although in June the car market grow just 4.3% due to political disputes.

While the Italian sales fell just 3.5% in August and 11.2% in the first two quarters of this year, Spain dropped 18.8% in August and 5.1% in first half, while July had been positive.

Belgium's car registrations dropped 0.7% in August, while in the first half there was an increase of 1.6%.

Remarkable was the dramatic tumble of Netherlands by 34.3% in first half 2013 and 12.6% in August.

Austrian car market dropped 4.4% in August and 8.4% in first two quarters of the year.

Outside of the top 10, Portugal reported a strong August performance (+19.9%) while Slovakia's August sales collapsed 34.2%.

In the table below, all the 40 European Car Markets, ranked for their size (the percentages in the table represent the changes of that period over the same, year ago:

We suggest you to read the table below and wishing to get more info on the single market, to click on it activating links with specific market report.