Car market remains above 10,000-unit mark in April

Car sales continued to rise in April, to over 10,000 units, according to auto market players, up by around 10% against the previous month. Compared with the similar period of last year, last month's sales saw a 25% decline, the lowest in 15 months.
The "Rabla" (junk car) scrappage scheme had a major impact on April results, while last year's scheme started in the last week of April.
"We expect nearly 40% of the 10,000 cars sold in April to be bought as part of the car scrappage scheme," said Alin Tapalaga, head of Porsche Inter Auto (PIA), the retail division of Porsche Romania. However, the PIA manager expects this percentage to gradually fall over the next few months. Even so, around 40-50% of the 100,000 cars to be bought on the Romanian market this year will be purchases made using "Rabla" vouchers, according to auto market officials.
In the first four months of the year, car sales fell by over 30% compared with the similar period of last year, to almost 41,500 cars.
In April, the best-selling car brands on the Romanian market remained local brands - Dacia, with 4,200 cars sold and a 38% market share, its biggest in five years, followed by Ford, with nearly 950 cars, and Volkswagen, with around 850 units.