New car registrations dropped a painful 16.3 percent in Europe in an acceleration of a long, and initially slow a downward trend. The European carmaker association ACEA calls the decline ”the steepest recorded in a month of December since 2008.” For the year the EU market was down 8.2 percent to 12,053,904 units, which is the “lowest level recorded since 1995,” says the ACEA.

Most of the Europe’s volume markets recorded a double-digit downturn ranging from -14.6 percent in France to -16.4 percent in Germany, -22.5 percent in Italy and -23.0 percent in Spain. The UK was the only volume market to post growth (+3.7 percent).

Industry contacts in Europe explain the acceleration not with a decreasing reluctance to buy cars. “A lot of people stopped buying cars long ago,” said a contact at a large European OEM, “but the dealers continued to buy. This is coming to an end.” He was alluding to the phenomenon of “one day registrations” where dealers buy the car to make their quota and to collect the incentive money, only to put the car up for sale “used” the next day at prices of sometimes 30 percent below list. When sold, these new cars then show up in the used car registration numbers.

In the meantime, supply and production have been adjusted, the bulge has worked itself through the anaconda and has been digested. We can expect sales data that more reflect real buying behavior.

For the year, the Volkswagen Group weathered the downturn with only a 1.6 percent loss, and a 1.7 percent gain in Market share. GM, Ford and Fiat had to digest double digit losses, so did PSA and Renault.

In December, Volkswagen registered similar losses as those of its major competitors. However, a lot of this goes on account of the Golf 7 launch. It had started in November and still hasn’t reached all of Europe.  Audi and Seat however also did hurt.

Data are available as Excel file here and as PDF here. A historical series of yearly data, going back until 1990 can be downloaded here.