One in six cars were sold by a Romanian in 2010

Ion Țiriac, Gheorghe Dolofan and Michael Schmidt, the last Romanians to hold companies with several tens or hundreds of millions of euros in turnover on the Romanian auto market, sold nearly 16,800 cars last year, with nearly one in six cars sold on the Romanian market originating from one of the three businessmen.

The volume of sales is down to nearly half of the 2009 level, both amid a 20% decline of the car market and as a result of Ford Romania sales being taken over in August by Ford.
The cumulated business of the imports division of Țiriac Holdings, Trust Motors and Grupul Automobile Bavaria amounted to nearly 332 million euros last year, down by nearly a third against the previous year, according to a ZF analysis.
The only business of the three that recorded a sales increase was the one controlled by Michael Schmidt, who in 1994 brought BMW to Romania, with the Automobile Bavaria group recording a nearly 23% increase in car sales, and a cumulated turnover of nearly 150 million euros on the segment of MAN trucks, according to ZF calculations, from 130 million euros a year before.