Finnish Cars Market is still struggling in 2024. New car passenger sales in August have been 6,316 (-14.3%) marking the 9th negative month in a row. YTD sales in August reached 48,704 (-17.2%), one of the worst performance in Europe.
Market Trend and Outlook
Finland’s economy fell into a recession in 2023. The recovery is expected to be gradual and to be driven by recovering domestic and external demand. HICP inflation is projected to decline to 1.4% in 2024, and the announced VAT hike is set to push it close to 2% in 2025. The planned consolidation efforts are expected to bring the general government deficit to below 3% by 2025, with public debt slightly exceeding 82% of GDP.
New car passenger sales in August 2024 have been 6,316 (-14.3%) marking the 9th consecutive negative month. YTD sales in August reached 48,704 (-17.2%), one of the worst performance in Europe.
Looking at cumulative data up to August 2024 brand-wise, the leader was still Toyota with 9,420 sales (-7.5%), followed by Volvo -up 2 spot- at 5,585 (+11.1%), Skoda -down 1 spot- at 4,436 (-21%) and Volkswagen -up 1 spot- with 3,868 units sold (-30.5%).
Kia ranked 5th with 3,852 sales (-14.2%), followed by BMW -up 1 spot- with 2,031 registrations (-22.3%), Mercedes -up 2 spots- at 2,468 new sales (-29%) and Nissan -up 2 spots- with 2,323 sales (+25.1%).
Hyundai climbed 4 spots into 9th position with 2,195 sales (+42.8%), followed by Tesla -down 4 spots- which closed the top 10 with 2,176 new car registrations (-40.8%).
Looking at best selling models the Toyota Corolla Sedan is the leader despite falling 22.1% in year-on-year sales, followed by the Toyota Yaris Cross up 6 spots (+61.2%).
Medium-Term Market Trend
The Finnish car market has remained quite stable in the passed decade with a main exception in the last 3 years. In fact after a 14.6% growth in 2011 the market remained between a low of 99,832 in 2013 and a peak of 116,743 in 2018 until the arrival of the pandemic.
In March 2020 the Covid-virus arrived in Europe causing many economies to shut down temporarily. The Finnish market suffered a 15.3% loss reaching 93,103 sales by the end of 2020, the lowest levels of the decade.
2021 presented a year of slight recovery, with sales remaining nearly unvaried compared to the previous year. While in 2022 the market lost 16.2% in volume, with cumulative sales reaching 80,061.
A combination of factors are behind the current industry struggle: the disruption in the global supply chain caused by a lack of raw materials, in particular for the production of microchips and Governments push towards Evs, with Scandinavian countries being ahead of this wave.
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales for all Brands, top 10 Manufacturer Groups, and top 10 Models.
