Portuguese Auto Market suffered a dip in August, falling for the fourth month in a row and reporting 11,649 sales (-10%). YTD figures reached 139,433 (+1.2%).
Market Trend and Outlook
Eurostat estimated that Portuguese GDP rose by 0.7% (q-o-q) in the first quarter of 2024, supported by private consumption and exports, while tourism slowed down substantially.
In 2024 investment is projected to grow at a strong pace, helped by the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Plan as well as by the recent improvement in economic sentiment. In the external sector, imports are set to outpace exports as investments, and to a lesser extent private consumption, are set to increase import demand.
Taking into account the recent surge in households’ income and the stabilisation in interest rates, economic growth is projected to move towards a more domestic-driven model over the forecast horizon. In full-year terms, growth is expected to moderate to 1.7% in 2024 and to rebound to 1.9% in 2025.
The shy economic projections are reflected in the portuguese auto market which, up to August 2024, recorded YTD figures at 139,433, gaining 1.2% from the prior year. On the other hand, monthly sales fell for the fourth month in a row, reporting 11,639 new registrations (-10%).
Looking at cumulative data up to August 2024 brand-wise, the leader remained Peugeot with 14,010 sales (-11.2%), followed by Dacia -up 1 spot- in 2nd with 10,732 registrations (+11.3%) and Mercedes -up 2 spots- with 10,416 units sold (+19.5%).
Renault -down 2 spots- ranked in 4th with 10,021 sales (-7.5%) followed by BMW -down 1 spot- at 8,993 (-4.1%), Toyota -up 1 spot- at 7,739 (+5.1%), and Citroen -up 1 spot- with 7,378 total sales (+11.2%).
Volkswagen lost 2 spots into 8th with 6,835 sales (-19.2%), followed by Tesla -up 1 spot- with 6,202 units sold (+7.5%), and Seat -down 1 spot- closed the top 10 with 5,482 sales (-11.2%).
Looking at specific models, reported in the dedicated article, the Dacia Sandero sold the most units, rising 37.8%. The second most sold car was the Peugeot 2008 despite a 3.5% decrease in year-on-year volume.
Medium-Term Market Trend
The Portuguese auto market has had many ups and downs in the last decade. Sales fell more than 50% from 2010 to 2012, starting at 274,559 and ending at 106,748. From 2013 to 2017 the car passenger market inverted its trend, more than doubling and reaching 248,039 new car registrations. The years 2018 and 2019 were slightly negative taking sales down to 231,492 by the end of 2019.
The arrival of the pandemic in 2020 caused the market to fall 37% taking it back down to 145,417 sales.
Following the collapse of the market during the pandemic, 2021 presented a year of slight recovery with sales reaching 146,706 (+1%) and 2022 grew another 6.6% to 156,309. A combination of factors are behind the lower demand in the past years: 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.
In 2023 the car passenger market reached 199,572 sales, an increase of 27.7%.
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales for all Brands, top 10 Manufacturers Group and top 10 Models
