Comments on: This Is Sick: European Auto (Non-)Sales

By: matt

matt — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:41:08 +0000

my friends at work have told me that if i want to find really nice empty roads, i just need to go to east germany. :-P

By: Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:06:32 +0000

@JJ: Yes, that’s him. Sorry for misspelling the name of the true inventor of the VW bus, and friend of hippies worldwide.

By: JJ

JJ — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:35:49 +0000

Ha…

Yes, highest elevation is 321 metres above sea level. And that’s on a slope of a mountain with it’s peak shared with Ze Zjermans and Belgium.

And if you mean the VW/Seat/Porsche/Audi/Skoda importer over here (Pon); I bet they are doing just fine. Not bad at all considering the older Pon started out going to Germany impersonating an English army lieutenant to get his hands on 12 Beetles to sell over here…

By: Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:27:03 +0000

@JJ: Proves again that the Netherlands are flat! Congratulations! And give my regards to Heer Pons. Keep it up, astublieft!

By: JJ

JJ — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:17:54 +0000

I don’t know what the empty road on turkey’s boarder has to do with anything other than some utopia concerning how most people stuck in traffic everyday in most parts of Europe would like to see their roads…

Right here in the Netherlands it’s not so bad. In jan-okt 2007, 455.731 were sold. In the same time period for 2008, 454.921 were sold.

In oktober 2008, 41.330 cars were sold, compared to 41.888 cars in oktober 2007. This is after a series of bank bail outs by the government and the Icelandic government taking a lot of peoples’ and local governments’ (ouch) money. I’m not saying it won’t get bad in november/december but overall it seems to be quite ok.

Yearly car sales have been around 500000 (+-50000)in the Netherlands ever since about 1985, only in 1999 it was more than 600.000 and in 2000 almost 600.000.

By: autonut

autonut — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:15:09 +0000

“The Polish market expanded in October 12.3 percent.” – is this another Polish joke? Their economy can’t be ahead of German, French or UK.

By: Martin Schwoerer

Martin Schwoerer — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:30:48 +0000

All perfectly rational behavior. People cut back in expectance of an economic crisis, and they purchase less when the supply of funny money is reduced. We’ll see a return to the long-term mean in two years at the latest, I would say.