Industry Group Sees Spanish LV Sales Surge in 2015

MADRID – Light-vehicle sales in Spain are on track to tally 1.05 million units this year, marking the first time volume has exceeded 1 million since 2008, according to the GANVAM association of  dealers, vendors and repairers.

The group’s forecast of a 22.7% year-on-year sales increase is significantly higher than its prediction of a 16% gain issued only 12 days earlier. According to WardsAuto data, LV deliveries for the year’s first nine months totaled 896,318 units, up 24% from 722,899 in the year-ago period.

The latest GANVAM projection reduces by one year the time expected for car sales to reach the 1.2 million-unit level considered normal for a market with the population and per-capita income of Spain.

Car sales in the country peaked at 1.65 million units in 2005 and last surpassed 1 million in 2008, when there were 1.16 million deliveries.

Vendors also have revised upward their estimates that used-car sales will grow 6% this year to 1.8 million units, double the 2014 rate. GANVAM predicts these improved expectations for new- and used-car demand will benefit the aftermarket sector, which has seen profits decline 30% during the near-decade-long sales slump.

AUDATEX, a provider of digital services to the automotive aftermarket, predicts a 1% increase in auto-repair activity in the Spanish market in 2015, upgrading a previous forecast of a 1.3% decline with recovery not expected to begin until 2017. Repair work had fallen 17% between 2011 and 2014, the company says.

The recovery in new-car sales should benefit repair shops because younger vehicles generate the greatest profitability, AUDATEX says in a statement.

“Vehicles younger than five years are covering the biggest number of kilometers per year, up to four times more than a vehicle older than 10 years, and, therefore, they are more likely – twice more likely – to have to go through a repairer,” the statement says.