Sales of already registered cars last year exceeded 190,000 units, according to data provided by the Ministry of Administration and the Interior. Compared with a total of 3 million units, this amounts to little more than 6%, analysts say, and very little compared with the European average.
In practice, for each imported new car, 1.3 already registered cars were sold in Romania. This is several times lower than on the French, German and English markets.
"Generally, buyers of new cars are not making their first acquisition as they already own a car," believes Marius Carp, executive manager of the Association of Automotive Manufacturers and Importers (APIA).
If two thirds of customers buying new cars last year also sold the cars they already owned, this means that more than half of the cars that changed owners were sold because the former owners had bought a new car.
In other words, only 90,000 cars - 3% of the total - were traded "willingly", without owners having to sell their old cars because they had bought new ones. In comparison, this proportion is much higher in France.
"The proportion of cars traded in the total cars in Romania is very low and points to the fact that the Romanian market is a market of accumulation. I think that one explanation is also the low purchasing power of the population," added Carp.
In other words, a car bought with a lot of effort in Romania tends to be used until it breaks down beyond repair, which is easy to notice just by looking at the very large number of old cars travelling through Bucharest or the rest of the country.
ionut.bonoiu@zf.ro ; transilvania@zf.ro
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