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Have new car sales hit rock bottom? After a boom year in 1999, where manufacturers sold 640,000 units, each successive year has brought deepening gloom to the sector. The closing sales figures for 2002 can only be described as disasterous - 308,000 units sold - less than half the level for 1999. Yet the picture is not uniformly gloomy...
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The car sales figures are a good indicator of the Polish economy. They show that despite the nominal figure of "38 million consumers", the real number of consumers in the western sense of the word is far less. To put this into a UK perspective - 2.5 million new cars were sold in the UK in 2002 - five times more head than in Poland.
Polish consumers are feeling the economic downturn and are curtailing their spending plans. Companies are not engaged in acquisitions of large fleets either. The depressing new car sales figures also reflect the poor condition of Daewoo, investor in the former state-owned FSO plant in Warsaw, and Fiat, which invested heavily in car plants in Tychy and Bielsko.
The two big Polish-based manufacturers suffered terribly last year. Daewoo's market share plummeted from 12.2% in 2001 to 5.9% in 2002. Fiat's fell from 23.8% in 2001 to 18.3% in 2002. Other manufacturers managed to grow market share, with Toyota and Peugeot making the biggest advances (from 4.6% to 7.6% and from 5.5% to 7.5% respectively. Other gainers were Skoda, Renault, Opel (which manufactures Agilas in Poland), VW, Ford and Citroen.
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These cars are mainly middle-market segment vehicles, and in most cases these manufacturers sold more units in 2002 than in 2001. A relatively strong zloty helped maintain imports at a steady level.
Top-end luxury car sales can be counted on the fingers of one hand; only eight Audi A8s were sold in Poland in 2002 compared to 760 in the UK. This gives a good indication of the relative wealth of the two populations. When health minister Łapiński was discovered to be buying two Peugeot 607s for his ministry, the resulting public outcry contributed to his dismissal.
Market analyst Samar collects new and used car sales statistics in Poland.Their English-language pages are linked here.
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