Demand For Cars Boom, Turkey Becomes Leader Of Europe

In first 3 months of 2004, Turkey became the country where the automobile demand increased with the highest ratio in Europe. Automobile sales in Turkey surpassed even the sales in 8 of 15 EU countries. While the automobile sales in January-March period reached to 95 thousand 395, this figure ranked the first among 27 countries with an increase of 368.7% in comparison with the last year. Fewer automobiles were sold in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal and Sweden. When the same period of last year was taken into account, Turkey had surpassed only Luxembourg among the EU countries in automobile sales. In respect of first three months, the automobile sales in 15 EU member states reached from 3 million 718 thousand 867 to 3 million 821 thousand 985 with an average increase of 2.8%. Among the EU member states, Spain became the country having the highest increase, with 20.8%. In the first quarter, the most automobile sales among the EU countries were realized in Germany with 765 thousand 304 automobiles.Â