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Europeans snap up old cars to avoid public transport

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Nick Carey and Inti Landauro -


Want a cheap used car to nip around town without running the gauntlet of coronavirus on public transport? Welcome to Pandemic Motors, we have just what you need. Across Europe, people are snapping up old bangers, clunkers, Klapperkasten, tacots and catorci, desperate to avoid buses and trains but wary of splashing out on a shiny new motor in uncertain economic times.


“Public transportation is terrific here, but with the Covid and all that, it’s better to avoid it,” said Robert Perez, who recently moved to Spain’s capital Madrid from Argentina. On the hunt for work, Perez, a 33-year-old automotive engineer, bought a red 2001 Seat Toledo for 2,000 euros ($2,370) from OcasionPlus, a Spanish used car firm that has opened four new dealerships since the lockdown due to soaring demand.


Data provided by research firm IHS Markit and online car market AutoScout24 showed there has been a marked upward shift in registrations of older cars across Europe, as well as a spike in internet searches for ageing vehicles.


The surge in interest in used cars is neither good news for struggling mass transit networks nor the environment as dirty old cars appear to be more in demand than new electric vehicles.


In the longer term, however, the shift away from public transport towards “individual mobility” in the pandemic era is expected to help carmakers, hit by a 27 per cent slump in new vehicle sales across Europe in the first 10 months of 2020.


At Nawaie Motoring’s crammed lot in the west London suburb of Hayes, general manager Ameen Sultani points out the older cars selling for under £3,000 ($3,985) that are in demand. He said prices for the cars, mostly over a decade old, have jumped by 25 per cent as buyers who used to take trains and buses look for affordable alternatives.


“Anything under £3,000 has sold very quickly and is very hard to replace in our inventory because everyone is chasing the same vehicles’’, Sultani said.


“Most of them have bought because they wanted to avoid public transport.”


Stronger than expected demand for new cars in the United States, Europe and especially China in recent months has helped major automakers recover to some extent from the financial blows pandemic lockdowns delivered in the spring. But an analysis of car registration data in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom conducted for Reuters by IHS Markit also shows there’s a significant shift towards older, used vehicles.


In France, for example, the IHS analysis showed used car registrations rose nearly 16 per cent in the third quarter while new vehicle sales fell more than 5 per cent. It also showed that in 2020 so far, vehicles over 15 years old made up a higher proportion of used car registrations than in 2019.


“It’s fair to say in the time of corona that the amount of vehicles older than 15 years has increased versus prior years’’, said Bjoern Huetter, an associate product director at IHS. There was an even bigger jump in Spain, with used car registrations up nearly 25 per cent, according to the IHS analysis Cristian Lopez, 34, is another buyer in Spain who went for the cheaper second-hand option, partly thanks to having saved some money during the country’s strict lockdown.


— Reuters


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