Portuguese Auto Market is expanding in 2024. After recovering from a losing streak in previous months, sales in October reached 14,882 sales, growing 8.93% in year-on-year volume. YTD figures stood at 169,179 (+2.32%).
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.
Despite the shy economic projections, the portuguese auto market is recovering in 2024 as sales in October grew by 8.93% in year-on-year volume and reached 14,883. YTD figures totaled 169,179 (+2.32%).
Looking at cumulative data up to October 2024 brand-wise, the leader was still Peugeot with 17,476 sales (-5.05%), followed by Dacia -up 1 spot- in 2nd with 13,048 registrations (+5.86%) and Mercedes -up 2 spots- with 12,908 units sold (+14.11%).
Renault -down 2 spots- ranked in 4th with 11,946 sales (-6.97%) followed by BMW -down 1 spot- at 11,294 (-4.46%), Toyota -up 1 spot- at 9,546 (+11.53%), and Volkswagen -down 1 spot- with 8,501 total sales (-11.21%).
Citroen ranked into 8th with 8,088 sales (+1.94%), followed by Tesla -up 2 spots- with 7,576 units sold (+18.73%), and Seat -down 1 spot- closed the top 10 with 6,484 sales (-4.98%).
Looking at specific models, reported in the dedicated article, the Dacia Sandero sold the most units, rising 24.72%. The second most sold car was the Peugeot 2008 despite growing merely 0.66% 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
