European car sales are at their lowest for five years, according to data published by the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) on Wednesday.
Sales across the EU and European Free Trade Area dropped to 1.84 million cars last month, reducing first-quarter growth to a mere 0.6% – the slowest gain since the second quarter of 2013 when the region was still in the middle of a recession.
In terms of the carmakers themselves, the steepest drops in sales were at Ford, Fiat, BMW and Nissan.
“Momentum is starting to slow in some markets and especially in the United Kingdom,” ACEA said. While this may in part be down to the extreme winter weather and a rise in vehicle taxes that took effect in April, we might also infer that uncertainty regarding Brexit may have hit the confidence of car buyers and contributed to these low figures.
There were also drops in two other of the five biggest automotive markets – Germany and Italy – with a 5.2% downturn for the region overall in March.