How the car market has changed
Con 1.4 million cars registered the car market 2022 in Italy marks an all-time low of the last 44 years, with a minimum increase expected for 2023, according to Unrae, of around 100,000 units. All in all, in the last three years the market has lost more than 1.6 million cars compared to 2019.
In the last year alone, the drop was 19%. But doing a jump back 10 years we don’t find a situation so different from today in terms of cars sold: the registrations had in fact been 1.42 million. However, this percentage had grown from year to year up to 1.9 million in 2019only to then collapse in the last three years.
What changes, compared to 10 years ago, are the market shares of the various manufacturers. In 2012 Fiat group automobiles had registered 414,920 new cars in Italy, with one market share in our country of 29.59% (percentage remained practically unchanged until 2017, the year before Marchionne’s death).
Considering also Psa (which is now part of the Stellantis group with Fiat) in 2012 the sales quota reached 550,000 cars for a quota more than 35% of the market. Il 2022 for the Franco-Italian group it ended instead with 461,178 total registrations and a market share of just 21%.
An abyss. This can be explained by the stagnation in the launch of new models after the death of the architect of the Fiat-Chrysler marriage (only in the last three years has the group’s creative sector got back on track) to which must be added the strong competition from Germany, Japan and Korea, the arrival of the Chinese on the scene and the new car rental formulas. Last but not least, the transition to the electric car which is further reshuffling the cards.
Fewer cars sold at higher prices
On the price front, an abyss separates us from 2012. In Italy the average expense for a car has grown by 10,000 euros in a decade, going from approximately 17 to 27 thousand euros. Inflation, the pandemic, the ecological transition have obviously played their part, but they only partially explain the increase in prices which is linked to the cost of raw materials and the greater electronic component at the service of the driver.
The fact remains that if you browse through the price lists of yesteryear, you will be amazed: in 1975 to bring home a Fiat 500 you needed 1,064,000 lirewhich according to Istat today in terms of purchasing power are equivalent to 6,073 euros, while the contemporary 500 has prices starting from 16,000 euros.
And even the richest are not doing well since, for example, in 1965 a Porsche 911 it cost 4.6 million lire, equal to a purchasing power in 2020 of just under 48,000 euros, while now the price of the German sports car starts at 116,000. The fact remains that it is the less economically strong motorists who pay the most for the price increases, who today, among other things, find it difficult to deal with installment payments with rates exceeding 7%.
The advent of electricity
The advent of electricity (from 2035 the sale of petrol and diesel models will be banned), with the offer of battery-powered cars costing on average 30% more than their sisters with an internal combustion engineis likely to have new and serious effect on sales of the next few years. But not only. Our country has a circulating park “Methuselah” of 12.2 years on average, against 8.7 years in England, 10.1 years in Germany and 11 years in France and 25.4% of the total is still made up of pre-Euro 4 cars. soaring prices will inevitably lead to postponing the purchase of the car with strong repercussions also on pollution.