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Growth in W Europe

car market on way

down again

BRUSSELS: New car registrations in western Europe rose 3.1 percent year-on-year in March according to provisional figures released on Tuesday by the European automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA).

"We said that we didn't expect much growth this year. The first two months seemed to indicate there was a surge in growth which we thought was due to a number of factors. It's now on it's way down again," said ACEA's James Rosenstein.

"Overall the market is not strong, we expect some two or three percent this year," Rosenstein told Reuters.

Germany's Volkswagen retained is market share leadership with 16.7 percent of the 1,275,300 vehicles registered in the EU's 15 countries, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

The United States's General Motors group held on to second place in the league, albeit with a slimmer 12.8 percent share compared with last year, the ACEA figures said.

Next is a tightly bunched group comprising the US group Ford, Italy's Fiat and France's PSA Peugeot Group, the first two neck-and-neck with 11.9 percent and the latter with 11.8 percent, a half percentage point drop on last year.

At the other end of the scale came Sweden's Volvo, which posted a 30.8 percent slump in registrations, in part a reflection of the 16.5 percent drop in registrations on the carmaker's home market.

Korean manufacturers continued to make inroads on the region's market, their combined 74.6 percent rise in registrations taking them to nearly 24,200 vehicles in March.

Germany, Europe's largest market, posted a 4.5 percent rise in registrations, taking it to 377,000 units, while France saw a 3.2 percent rise to 191,900 vehicles.

The region's other large markets, Italy and Britain, saw drops of 1.6 and 0.8 percent, taking them to 173,000 and 180,300 respectively.-Reuter