Romcar, the importer of Ford on the domestic market, plans to expand on the segment of MPVs, very popular on Western European markets, yet accounting for a share of below 1% of the Romanian market, says Catalin Gavra, a general manager with Romcar.
"What's happening on the Romanian car market is in stark contrast with what's going on in all developed countries such as Germany, Switzerland or England, where 80% of families own a MPV," underscored Catalin Gavra.
He says there will come a time when MPVs will play a role as important in Romania as they play in the West.
MPVs account for 1.35% in overall car imports, while against overall car sales in Romania, their market share amounts to less than 1%.
On this segment, Romcar launched the new generation Ford Galaxy in June 2006, together with S-Max, while C-Max facelift will be launched in about two months. In the first two months of the year, Ford Galaxy ranked 8th in terms of sales, with 21 units sold on the MPV segment, compared with only 13 units in 2006. During the same period, Romcar sold 17 S-Max MPVs, namely half the number of units sold under the same brand in 2006.
To keep up the sales growth pace, Romcar plans to expand its network of sales centres to over 35. At present, the network includes 26 sales centres, of which 19 are also servicing centres.
Ford ranks 6th in the ranking of best-selling cars of the first two months of this year with 1,494 units, up 44.2% against the same period of last year. It sold a total number of 2,157 vehicles (commercial vehicles included), which helped it reach an overall market share of 5.6% in the first two months of 2007.
On the segment of passenger cars, Ford importer held a market share of 4.5%. After the first 2 months of this year, Ford holds the leading position in terms of sales of commercial vehicles weighing below 3.5 tonnes, with 662 sold units.
"In March, we want to go beyond the mark of 1,300 sold vehicles. The start of the year has been quite difficult and many declined offering precise information. In 2007, we want to sell more than 17,000 vehicles, compared with the 12,844 we sold in 2006. The figure includes commercial vehicles, and not only passenger cars. We plan for Fiesta to go beyond 500 sold units within a month in 2007, with Focus to exceed the 300 units per month threshold in the near future," underscored Catalin Gavra.
Romcar sales last year amounted to approximately 160 million euros. "For 2007, we expect our turnover to be worth more than 220 million euros," stated the general manager of Romcar.
One of the most eagerly awaited Ford models in Romania is the new Mondeo, which was launched during Geneva Auto Show early this month.
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