In February 2022, EU passenger car registrations fell to a historic low level for this month with 719,465 units. Still hindered by supply chains disruptions, passenger car registrations decreased by 6.7% compared to February 2021, reaching a historic low for this month since records began. 

Good dynamics again this month on the Central and Eastern Europe markets with the Romanian market noticing a 39.2% passenger car registrations increase from January. Slovakia, Portugal, Latvia, Bulgaria and Cyprus also saw double-digit growth from last month. 

The downtrend seen in January continued on the Italian and French markets with -21.1% and -15.2% in February. 

Some manufacturers are not equally affected by these historic low levels: 

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High growth from February 2021: 

• Hyundai: +25.1%
• Toyota: +4.7%
• Mazda: +8.6%
• Honda: +68.3%
• BMW Group: +1.3%
• Mercedes-Benz: +1.9%

Decline:

• Volkswagen Group: -11.6%
• Stellantis: -17.5%
• Renault: -3.8%
• Ford: -10.9%
• Volvo: -17.4%
• Nissan: -24.9%

How does March look?

We forecasted the European passenger car market using Indicio. We built 28 models composed of 13 leading indicators on data from 2003 to 2022. Indicio weighted each model depending on performances at each horizon to create an aggregate forecast. We anticipate a seasonal upturn in March with 899k passenger car registrations, which represents a -15.4% YOY decrease compared to March 2021. 

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