Car sales continue positive trend in January

In January 2023 39 847 cars were sold in Belgium and Luxembourg, and that’s 17,4% more than in the same month last year. The positive sales trend emerging since August last year is thus continuing, but we’re still far from the pre-corona figures, with 51 074 cars sold in January 2020.

The cars registered in January are mostly orders and deliveries planned in 2022, so one can’t estimate the influence of the newly held Brussels Motor Show in the middle of the month yet. Yesterday, the ‘net’ registrations for the whole of 2022 were also published, resulting in 359 999 net registrations in 2022, 2% less than in 2021. Net registrations are not taking into account cars that have been registered first but deregistered within 30 days.

The market of light commercial vehicles (LCVs) also had a good start in January (+25,8% compared to last year), and the same was true for heavier transport: +6,5% for trucks under 16 tons, +21,6% for trucks of 16 tons and more. Even the two-wheelers did relatively well; registrations of motorbikes rose by 2,8%, and those of mopeds and scooters even by 28%.

BMW is unapproachable, and Mercedes continues to rise

When we look at the brands, we see once again BMW at the top. With 4 149 BMWs sold in January, they’re doing 24,9% better than last year and reaching a market share of 10,4%. Mercedes-Benz has overtaken Volkswagen and sold 40,8% more than in January last year, although it also recorded a sales growth of 31,8%.

Peugeot (4th place) is the only make in the top 5 that sees a light regress in sales (-9,9%), while Toyota is entering this top 5 with a sales rise of 19% still, compared to last year, and that was already a very good year for the Japanese. Consequently, Audi fell to 6th place, despite the 3,5% sales increase.

Other brands that have been doing well in January were Volvo (+42,3%, 7th place), Kia (+34,4%, 11th place), Hyundai (+84,1%, 14the place), and Fiat (+72%, 18th place). Tesla grew by 1385,4% (20th place), but that’s because they almost sold nothing in January 2022 for an unknown reason. Some other popular brands have been recovering from previous losses, like Skoda (+17,8%), Ford (+11,4%), Opel (+44,4%), Nissan (+26,2%), Seat (+21,8%), and Mazda (+37,9%).

When we got to smaller sales numbers, big growers were Land Rover, Jeep, Suzuki, Lynk & Co, MG, Cupra, and Subaru. The new Chinese brands are slowly beginning to grow also. The losers of the month are Renault (-25%, now in 8th place), Citroën (-32,6%, 15th place), Lexus (-23,5%), and Jaguar (another 20% down).

Of course, it’s far too early to draw conclusions from these figures, and we’ll have to wait to see what the influence of BMS will be, but certain tendencies seem to be confirmed. The two biggest German premium makes are conquering the Belgian market, and that’s all due to the still increasing percentage of company cars (of all kinds) in the sales statistics.