Unfortunately, this was to be expected. The situation caused by the coronavirus epidemic strongly affects many industries, including the automotive industry. Factories are idle, and fewer and fewer people decide to buy new cars available. Serious declines were recorded in March, but this April and probably the next months may mean a real collapse on the market.
According to data published by Samar, only 5,557 new passenger cars were registered in Poland for the first 10 days of April 2020. This means a drop of 65% year on year. There is also a very bad situation in the commercial vehicle segment – in the first decade of April, 847 units were registered (-53.5 percent).
In total, over 6 days of April 6,404 cars with a permissible total weight of up to 3.5 tonnes hit the market. It is 64.01 percent less than at the beginning of April 2019. As Samar adds, there were the same number of working days (eight) in the periods analyzed.
The number of daily registrations has decreased to less than a thousand cars, and there are signs that this trend will continue in the following days of April. According to the industry, the next months may be even worse, because now customers are picking up previously ordered cars. There are no new buyers in the showrooms.
All brands recorded a decrease in sales. Interestingly, the top ten included three premium brands.
| Brand | Registrations | Change | Market Share |
| 1. Toyota | 966 | -56.3% | 17.4% |
| 2. Skoda | 680 | -68.0% | 12.2% |
| 3. Volkswagen | 406 | -75.3% | 7.3% |
| 4. Kia | 378 | -56.7% | 6.8% |
| 5. BMW | 342 | -45.0% | 6.2% |
| 6. Mercedes | 323 | -53.7% | 5.8% |
| 7. Volvo | 310 | -11.4% | 5.6% |
| 8. Dacia | 245 | -75.1% | 4.4% |
| 9. Ford | 230 | -56.6% | 4.1% |
| 10. Renault | 189 | -67.7% | 3.4% |
It is also bad on the used car market. Restrictions at borders, restrictions on movement, as well as in the work of departments in vehicle registration offices also negatively affect the sale of used cars and the import of cars, which actually collapsed. As reported, in March imports of used vehicles amounted to only about 52,000 units. It is 41.5 percent less than last year.
