BUCHAREST, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Used car sales in Romania reached a record high of some 474,000 units in the first 11 months of the year, by 58 percent more than in the entire 2016, Association of Automobiles Makers and Importers (APIA) said Wednesday in a statement.
The sales of new motor vehicles in Romania registered a growth of 11.1 percent during this period, amounting to 142,300 units, and the market might exceed at the end of the year, for the first time in nine years, the 150,000-unit threshold.
The most popular brands sold are local-produced Dacia, with 38,950 units, followed by Volkswagen, 14,342 units, Renault (11,200 units), Ford (11,125) and Skoda (10,683).
At the beginning of this year, local industry insiders once worried that used cars market would surge a lot while new car sales would go down, amid the removal in February of the environment tax which mainly targeted imported used cars.
It now appears that the growth of new car sales is still satisfactory, though the ration between used and new automobiles reach to 4.8 to 1, from some 3 to 1, before the tax cut.
Romania has one of the oldest car parks in Europe, with an average car age of over 13 years and more than 1.6 million vehicles whose age exceeds 15 years, according to official data.
