Solenza helps market rebound

Following the decline posted in the first three months of this year, the Romanian car market rebounded, due to Dacia Solenza, which reached retailers in April and to the imports, which continued to grow.
Car sales reached 34,885 units after the first four months of this year, 4.2% more than in the same time last year, data provided by the Association of Carmakers and Importers (APIA) show. April saw more than 11,400 units sold, against the 9,000 in the previous month, yet the structure of this figure highlights a gap between sales of local and imported vehicles.
The sales of Romanian-made cars went down by nearly 4% in the first four months this year, to less than 21,000 units. The decline is much lower than in Q1 (10%), though. The reason for this trend is the Dacia Solenza model. It hit the stores after April 8, so that it did not make a difference in the sales figures any sooner than last month. The potential clients for the Supernova model, now replaced by Solenza in the Dacia line, preferred to wait in Q1 for the new model to become available.
This “waiting phenomenon” induced by Solenza will soon be compensated for, the representatives of the carmaker in Pitesti say. They expect sales to be higher than those registered by Supernova over the last few years. Dacia is, after all, estimating sales to be over 25% higher than in 2002, so that 2003 will be the first year when the carmaker bought by Renault Group in September 1999 posts significant growth. Dacia sold nearly 5,000 units in April and came to total 15,384 cars sold in four months.
The other major local carmaker, Daewoo Automobile Romania, maintained its upward sales trend that began on the domestic market last year. Last month meant record sales for the Craiova-based carmaker, with 1,800 cars shipped to the customers.
ionut.bonoiu@zf.ro