Italian Autos Market decline continues in 2024. Sales in November reached 122,862 sales (-11.7%%) marking the 4th consecutive month of negative performance. YTD figures stood at 1,44 million (-0.4%). Toyota advanced to second place (+27.6%) challenging Fiat (-16.8%) for the top spot.
Market Trend and Outlook
In 2024, economic growth is forecast to remain at 0.9%, similar to 2023, with government-supported residential investment declining and being replaced by capital spending under the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). Inflation is expected to increase to 1.6% as energy prices stabilize. The government deficit is projected to drop to 4.4% of GDP due to the end of energy-related measures and changes in housing tax credits. However, public debt is set to rise to 141.7% of GDP by 2025 due to a less favorable interest-growth differential and the impact of housing incentives.
Employment growth will cool as real wages rise, while net exports will contribute positively to GDP growth. By 2025, GDP growth is forecast to slightly accelerate to 1.1%, with inflation reaching 1.9%.
Even so, the downfall of the Italian car passenger market continued in November 2024. Monthly sales fell to 122,862 units (-11.7%), marking the fourth consecutive month of year-on-year contraction. YTD figures reached 1.44 million, down 0.4% compared to the previous year.
Looking at cumulative data up to November 2024 brand-wise, the market leader Fiat continued to underperform the industry and lose market share, with 144,405 sales (-16.8%). Soon, we might see a new leader in the market, as Fiat seems likely to be overtaken soon.
The new leader could be the current second, Toyota. Growing at a very fast pace, it grew 1 spot and totaled 120,815 cumulative sales (+27.6%). Volkswagen -down 1 spot- ranked 3rd with 110,966 sales (-0.5%).
In fourth place Renault with 92,858 sales (+7.8%), followed by Dacia with 91,557 (+7.9%) and Peugeot -up 1 spot- with 71,433 (-4.7%).
In seventh place Citroen -up 1 spot- with 70,200 units sold (-3.4%) ahead of Jeep -up 1 spot- with 68,990 sales (-1.6%), Ford -down 3 spots- with 63,074 registrations (-19.2%) and in 10th place Audi with 60,831 (+0.1%).
Looking at the best-selling model ranking, deeply reported in the dedicated post, the Fiat Panda was still the market leader, as for the last 40 years, despite sales droppin 0.2% in year-on-year volume, followed by the Dacia Sandero (+25.3%) and the Jeep Avenger (+94.8%).
Medium-Term Market Trend
In the last decade the Italian market has had many ups and down. Starting at 1.8 million sales in 2010, it had 3 consecutive years of negative y/y sales with a minimum of 1.29 million reached in 2013. From 2014 up to 2019 the overall trend was positive, reaching a maximum in 2018 of nearly 2 million sales.
At the end of 2019 the Italian market was standing at 1.9 million sales, but with the pandemic in 2020 the market took a substantial hit, moving to the 1.4 million mark. This -27.1% drop marked the Italian auto-market for the following years.
Post-Covid hasn’t looked too good for demand in the Italian market. 2021 showed a slight sign of recovery (+8.9%) that faded away in the following year. In fact, 2022 totaled 1.32 million sales, the lowest of the decade and a 9.6% decrease from the prior year. Despite the overall downtrend, the market did grow in the last 5 months of the year and luckily the momentum continues going into 2023, that started very strong.
There are still some issues that the market will have to confront if it wants to recover from the fall of 2022: first of all the current European sentiment that is pushing more towards EVs is putting negative pressure on demand; and secondly in the last year we have seen a disruption in the global supply chain caused by a lack of raw materials, in particular for microchip production, that has lead manufactures to increase overall prices.
In 2023 the market performed very well, with yearly sales closing at 1.57 million, 18.9% higher than the prior year.
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales for all Brands, top 10 Manufacturers Group and top 10 models.
