Buyers choose imported cars, domestic commercial vehicles more
Posted by meb at April 18th, 2008
About 70 percent of automobiles sold in Turkey in the first three months of this year were imported, while about 60 percent of commercial vehicles were domestically produced, the Automotive Distributors’ Association (ODD) announced on Thursday.
The number of vehicles sold in the first three months of the year rose to 120,427, up 27.9 percent compared to the same period last year, ODD noted. In the January-March period of this year, passenger car sales rose to 73,937, up 35.1 percent on the same period last year, while light commercial vehicle sales reached 46,496 - an increase of 17.8 percent over last year. Of the 73,937 passenger vehicles sold in the January-March period, 49,756 were imports, whereas only 21,374 of the 46,496 light commercial vehicles sold in that same period were imported. Fiat and Ford maintained their dominance in commercial vehicle manufacturing in Turkey; Ford sold 11,991 and Fiat 8,146 light commercial vehicles in this period.
Turkey sees 59.4 percent drop in new car registrations
Meanwhile, the number of newly registered motor vehicles dropped by a record 59.4 percent in February from the previous month; in February, 44,046 vehicles were registered for the first time, while this figure was 108,425 in January.
Nearly 4,000 traffic registrations were deleted in February. This figure marks a 10.4 percent fall in the cancellation of vehicle registrations in comparison to the same month last year. A majority of the new vehicles that appeared on İstanbul highways in February were Renaults, according to data from the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat).
The total number of new vehicle registrations for January and February combined was 152,471, while registration cancellations amounted to 9,955 in the same period. As of the end of February, there were slightly over 13 million registered vehicles in Turkey.
source: Today’s Zaman
Related posts: