Sweden Auto 2016 celebrates the new all time record, the second n a row, with a sparkling December, new best sales month ever. Renault scored the best increase of the year.
Market Outlook
The latest data for GDP growth in Q3 were downbeat. The economy entered into a lower gear in the third quarter compared to the previous quarter, mainly due to a near stagnation in domestic demand. Stagnant fixed investment was the main driver of the deceleration.
However, at the moment no effect of this deceleration had been seen in the automotive sector, running at an impressive speed after 36 months of year on year increase.
According to data released by the BIL Sweden, the Swedish Associations of Car Manufacturers, in December the sales improved 11.6% with 37.332 registrations, the new best sales month ever.
In the full year, the market hit the new all-time volume record with 372.279 sales (+7.8%), the second in a row.
While considering the light commercial vehicles segments, at all time record as well with 55.669 units, the total Swedish light vehicles market grew over 0.4 million units, first time ever, at 428.012, ranking as World’s 28th.
Competitive Arena
Among the best performer of the year, Volkswagen, BMW, Kia and Mercedes, while the best increase was reported by the French Renault, up 27.1% at 14.374 sales. The local brand Volvo led the competition with over 71.000 units, as always.
Negative performance reported by Mitsubishi, down 27.1%, while others lost were recorded for Nissan, Subaru and Jeep.
At model wise, for the first time after 54 years a car not a Volvo led the ranking. This historic event is correlated with the Volvo decision to discontinue the V70, the best vehicle in Sweden for the past 19 years (1997–2015).
Indeed the Volkswagen Golf was the leader with 22.084 sales (-3.1%) followed by the Volvo V70 with 19.999 units (-30.1%) and the Volvo S/V60 with 16.755 (+14.0%).
The Volkswagen Polo shined improving 54.7% at 7.091 units. While in the table below we report on the top 40 models to see the full best-selling models ranking with the top 100, please see the dedicated article.
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales for all Brands, top 10 Manufacturers Group and top Models
