EU passenger car sales increased 9.1% in April to 1,273,733 units. This was the highest volume of sales for an April since 2008, when the recession first hit Europe.

All of the big five economies grew in the month, year-on-year. Spanish (+21.2%) and Italian (+11.5) sales saw double digit growth compared to April 2015.

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Germany and France grew at 8.4% and 7.1% respectively, while UK sales increased by just 2.0%, year-on-year, the slowest in the EU.

A number of smaller economies also saw double digit growth, including Greece, where sales grew by almost a quarter (24.8%) in April, compared to the same month in 2015.Croatia, In total 16 countries saw double digit new car sale growth in period.

Car sales did not shrink in any EU country.

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VW group remained the largest manufacturing group on the continent, with over a quarter (25.2%) of the market share. This was down slightly from the 26.1% market share it had in April 2015. The fall was mostly due to Volkwsagen sales which grew by 2.7% to 152,619, but failed to keep pace with the overall market growth. Its market share fell from 12.7% in April 2015 to 12.0% in April 2016.

Daimler Group saw the largest growth in market share. A 21.2% year-on-year increase in sales of Mercedes and Smart cars, from 65,543 to 79,446, meant its market share grew from 5.6% to 6.2%.