Argentinian auto market in 2020 falls by 22.7% as the pandemic and lockdowns affect sales. Full-Year sales have been 338.945, while Fiat gains over 3% share and enters the podium.
Market Trend
The Argentinian car market was hit in 2020 by the global COVID-19 pandemic, and of course, this had a noticeable impact on sales. Despite this, already before the arrival of the virus, the market was further struggling.
In the last decades, the market surfed on waves with sudden falls followed by a sharp recovery. The current record was established in 2013 with 923.000 sales before falling down to 630.000 in 2015 and start the recovery.
Rapid expansion was driven by the implementation of the new National Automotive Plan, sponsored by the Prime Minister, called One Million Plan, aiming to double sector employment in 5 years of booming export and domestic demand. The election of Macri’s government, while changed the economic policy, gave new expectations and then boost to the sector, which grew both in 2016 and 2017. Indeed, in 2017 the market hit the second-best results ever, with 892.739 sales (+29.8%).
However, in the last three years, the market has been disappointing, as sales dropped 11.5% in 2017, while in 2019 the huge economic crisis hardly hit the new vehicles demand and the market felt down during all the year ending with a final score below the half-million units, with the worst performance in the last 15 years.
After starting the year already significantly down (-21.5%), the market started collapsing even further in March as the virus struck. The sharpest drop in sales this year was in April when sales declined by 87.7%. The following months registered significant trend swings, in fact in June the market grew 5.5% before dropping again in the following months and then displayed an impressive recovery towards the end of the year before falling again by 46.3% in December.
Indeed, Full-Year sales for 2020 have been 338.945, reporting a decline of 22.7% compared to 2019.
Brand-wise, this year the leader Renault (-34.1%) lost 0.9% market share, followed by the growing Fiat (-15.2%), which gained an impressive 3.1% share and jumped 2 spots. Chevrolet on the other hand fell 1 spot, losing 34.2, and also lost 0.7% share. Ford fell in 4th place -down 1 spot- (-40.3%), followed by Peugeot which lost 29.9%.
Nissan remained in 6th place and lost 28.8%, followed by Citroen (-27.8%), and Jeep, which registered the best performance in the leaderboard, losing only 14.1%. Closing the leaderboard we have Honda -up 1 spot- losing 41.8% this year overtaking Mercedes, which registered the worst performance in the leaderboard by falling 46.9%.
The most sold vehicle this year remained the Toyota Hilux despite falling 26.9% with 18.327 units sold, followed by the Chevrolet Onix -up 1 spot- which lost only 4% registering 15.851 new sales this year. In third place we have the Fiat Cronos entering the podium by jumping 8 places and growing 43.3% this year with 15.834 units sold. Despite this impressive performance, the star of the year remains the Volkswagen T-Cross, which entered the leaderboard by jumping 30 spots this year and growing 151.9%.
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales for all Brands, top 10 Manufacturers Group and top 10 Models.
