Turkey produces nearly 1.5 mln vehicles

ISTANBUL

Turkey’s carmakers produced a total of 1.46 million vehicles (passenger cars and commercial vehicles combined) last year, data from the Automotive Manufacturers’ Association (OSD) have shown.

The automotive industry’s total output exhibited a 6 percent decline compared with 2018.

Passenger car production stood at 983,000 units in 2019, which translated into a 4 percent decline from the previous year, OSD said.

In the commercial vehicle segment, production contracted by 9 percent on an annual basis, with light commercial vehicle output declining by 8 percent and heavy commercial vehicle production down 18 percent.

OSD also reported that a total of 492,000 vehicles were sold on the domestic market last year, pointing to a 23 percent contraction from 2018.

Passenger car sales were down 20 percent to 387,000 units while the commercial vehicle market contracted by 33 percent.

According to data from the business group, local carmakers’ shipments to foreign markets declined by 5 percent to 1.25 million units.

Passenger car exports also exhibited a decline of 5 percent to 828,744 units.

The automotive industry’s export revenues dropped 3 percent to $31.2 billion last year.

Passenger car exports amounted to $11.9 billion.

Used car sales up

On a related note, online used car sales stood at 1.77 million units, pointing to a 10 percent increase from 2018, the Automotive Distributors’ Association’s (ODD) second-hand car online sales report has shown.

In 2019, 83 percent of the vehicles put up for sale online was sold on average 35 days whereas back in 2018, 73 percent of vehicles advertised online were sold within 42 days.

The share of passenger cars sold on the online used car market was 73.3 percent whereas commercial vehicles’ share was 26.7 percent.

Renault was the most favorite brand with 240,870 units sold on the online used car market, followed by Volkswagen with 239,700. Ford and Fiat came third and fourth with 177,464 and 176,755 units, respectively.

Ten brands accounted for some 75 percent of all used car sales in 2019.

In the luxury and upper luxury car segment, sales amounted to around 95,000 units.

In December alone, the online used car market grew 27 percent on an annual basis to 176,194 units sold.

Some 95.6 percent of cars put up for sale were sold in December whereas the corresponding figure for the January-December period was 83 percent.