Dacia, the unicorn of the car industry: you wouldn’t have expected this since January

In the context of the microchip and semiconductor crisis, the car market has contracted significantly in recent years, and the period of difficulties did not end in 2022. Dacia, amazingly, is the exception to the rule.

The European car market, in January 2022, was reflected in sales of only 822,423 units. During the same period, Dacia registrations increased by 19.1%, an important victory for the local manufacturer. There were still impressive figures on the car sales market in the first month of the new year, but the general trend is downward, except for the giant from Mioveni.

Dacia, among the exceptions to the rule

The European Automobile Manufacturers Association or ACEA has published the latest edition of the study on the European car market. This time, the figures for January 2022 were targeted. The Volkswagen group with 173,262 units remains in first place in the ranking, followed by Stellantis with 139,949 registered cars. Renault is on three with 71,349, Hyundai on four with 66,249 units, and Toyota on five with 57,155 units.

More important than the above figures are the trends, in which direction the market was going, and out of the top five, only Hyundai and Toyota enjoyed a month-on-month increase. Hyundai continues to be an important exception to the general trend of the car market with an increase of 28.7% compared to January last year. Renault, Dacia’s parent company, unfortunately fell by 3.5%.

However, returning to Dacia’s performance in Europe, including the EFTA states and the United Kingdom, the domestic manufacturer recorded sales of 34,150 units, an increase of 19.1% in volume. In this context, Dacia is very close to the sales of the parent brand in the group. As a reference, Renault sold only 42,219 units under its own brand. Finally, the Romanian manufacturer came to hold 4.2% of the European car market, up from 3.4% in the same period last year and over Honda (0.7%), Mazda (1.3%), Nissan (1.9%) or even Seat (2.9%), Citroen (3.2%), Fiat (3.3%) and Opel (4%).