The French car market, boosted by government support measures, recovered in June, increasing by 1.2% year on year, after months of free fall linked to the coronavirus health crisis, manufacturers announced on Wednesday .
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233,818 new vehicles in June
The Renault group (with Dacia and Alpine) benefited from the rebound (+ 6.5%), while PSA (Peugeot, Citroën, DS, Opel) saw its deliveries continue to drop (-9.1%) compared to June 2019, according to figures published by the Committee of French Automobile Manufacturers (CCFA).
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The automobile trade, put at a standstill during the confinement from March 17 to May 11, had collapsed in the spring: fall in new passenger car registrations by 72% in March, by 88.8% in April, then again by 50.3% in May.
Some 233,818 new vehicles were put on the roads of France last month. The deconfinement logically marked an upturn, reinforced by the automobile support plan announced at the end of May by President Emmanuel Macron.
The effects of the ecological bonus and the new conversion bonus
The market was boosted by the reinforcement of the ecological bonus for electric vehicles as well as by the new conversion bonus which subsidizes the purchase of recent, new or used vehicles, in exchange for the scrapping of a vehicle former.
However, June had two more working days than June 2019. Corrected for this calendar effect, the market would remain slightly in decline over one year. In total over the first half, the French automobile market posted a fall of 38.6% to 715,802 new cars.