The French automobile market, stimulated by government support measures, recovered in June, increasing by 1.2% year on year, after months of free fall linked to the health crisis.
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The group Renault (with Dacia and Alpine) benefited from the rebound (+ 6.5%), while PSA (Peugeot, Citroën, DS, Opel) saw its deliveries continue to drop (-9.1%) compared to June 2019, according to figures published on July 1 by the Committee of French Automobile Manufacturers (CCFA).
The automobile trade, put at a standstill during the confinement from March 17 to May 11, had collapsed in the spring: fall in new passenger car registrations by 72% in March, by 88.8% in April, then again by 50.3% in May.
Some 233,818 new vehicles were put on the roads of France last month.
The deconfinement logically marked an upturn, reinforced by the automobile support plan announced at the end of May by President Emmanuel Macron.
The market was boosted by the reinforcement of the ecological bonus for electric vehicles as well as the new scrapping bonus which subsidizes the purchase of recent vehicles (new or used) in exchange for the scrapping of an old vehicle.
However, June had two more working days than June 2019. Corrected for this calendar effect, the market would remain slightly in decline over one year.
In total over the first half, the French automobile market posted a fall of 38.6% to 715,802 new cars.
(AFP)
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