Last year, the car dealer group Van Mossel became the biggest car seller in Belgium. The group overtook importer D’Ieteren, which had been the most important car seller in this country for years.
According to data from dealer data analyst Aumacon, requested by De Tijd, Van Mossel recorded 32,500 new-car registrations in 2025, while D’ieteren registered 28,150.
“The Belgian car market was under pressure last year,” says Bart Schimmel, Aumacon market analyst in De Tijd. “Van Mossel has a very diverse portfolio of brands, while D’Ieteren is much more dependent on the Volkswagen Group’s brands, which it also imports.”
Serious growth
Van Mossel came to Belgium in 2018, when the group bought 22 car dealers (some representing Citroën, others Fiat, Kia, Opel, and Toyota) from Alcopa Group, the holding of the Moorkens family. In eight years, it has grown to 185 dealerships selling 32 different brands. Apart from the 32,50à new cars, Van Mossel also sold almost 27,000 second-hand cars.
The company also has a leasing division with 54,000 cars under contract and a separate body shop repair division at 15 locations. Last year, the Belux division of the group accounted for almost one-third of total turnover, the largest share after the home market, the Netherlands. Van Mossel has also more recently expanded into other European countries, including Denmark, France, Germany, and the UK. An eighth country, Poland, is to be added soon.
In Belgium, the focus is now clearly on the Walloon region, where Van Mossel only has a division of its leasing arm, Westlease, for the moment. “In Flanders, we have practically completed our network,” says Koen Claesen, the Belgian CEO for Van Mossel. “In Wallonia, on the contrary, there’s still room for growth. At the moment, we have already signed intent statements to exploit branches for the sale of second-hand cars and body repair.”
According to Claesen, the growth in turnover in the Belux (+9% to just over €2 billion) was maninly due to the rise of electric car sales. “The demand for second-hand electric cars has risen dramatically since the closing of the Hormuz Street,” says Claesen. “Last year, we could offer every interested EV client almost 10 potential vehicles; now, we have two to three clients for every second-hand EV we can get hold of.
Consolidation
According to Van Mossel, the Belgian car market was ready for more professionalism and consolidation when they arrived here. “Just in time, the right party at the right place,” says General CEO Erik Berkhof. The arrival of Van Mossel, the Swedish group Hedin, is another big competitor in the car distribution landscape, was coinciding with the evolution of the car distribution system into an agency model.
Car group Stellantis, one of Van Mossel’s most important partners in the Belux, was one of the first to try to implement that model here, and Van Mossel happily took advantage of it. The implementation of that agency model hasn’t succeeded everywhere yet, and some importers or manufacturers are even backtracking for the moment, because there’s a serious reaction from the existing dealers who see their entire business model changed. It will take time and some serious convincing of people to make it work. But Van Mossel has become one of the more important players in this scene.
