UAE’s market in 2021 rises by 26.4% with 216,535 sales, reporting a very strong performance all year, except for Q1 when sales fell 6.9%. Suzuki shines, gaining 159.9% and rising 9 spots.
Market Trend
The UAE car market this year recovered very effectively from the crash of the previous year, rising in double-digits all year except a fall in Q1.
Stricken by the 2008 financial crisis, the UAE vehicles market performed an outstanding growth in the period 2010-2015, more than doubling volumes from 213.072 in 2010 to 408,154 in 2015.
However, the growth was broken by the reduced purchase power that arrived in the second part of 2015 due to the sharp decline of oil revenue and the introduction of restrictive fiscal policies.
The market started to fall down in 2016 and in 2018, when the government introduced a 5% VAT duty, the annual volume was back down at 247,652 units.
In 2019, like in other markets in the region, the UAE market started recovering. Indeed, the Full-year ended at 263,001 sales, improving 6.2% from the previous year.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic sales fell in 2020. In fact, 171,252 units have been sold, reporting a decline of 34.9% compared to 2019.
In 2021 the year started negatively for the UAE market, in fact, in Q1 49,602 units have been sold, reporting a 6.9% decrease in sales compared to Q1 2020, while in Q2 sales started growing quickly, reporting a 72.1% increase in sales with 55,461 units due to the incredibly low volumes in Q2 2020.
In Q3 sales kept growing quickly, gaining 43.6% with 54,212 units sold, while in Q4 sales gained 19.2% with 57,260 units.
Indeed, Full-Year sales for 2021 have been 216,535, reporting a 5.5% increase compared to 2020.
Brand-wise, this year the leader Toyota (+13.8%) lost 3% market share, followed by Nissan (+8.6%), which lost 2.7% share, and by Mitsubishi which on the other hand gained 4.2% share, rising 95.6%. BMW remained in 4th place and gained 21.4%, followed by Kia which gained 38.8%.
Hyundai -up 1 spot- gained 51.5%, followed by Suzuki (+159.9%) which reported the best performance and rose 9 spots, and Lexus -down 2 spots- which gained 12.6% sales. Closing the leaderboard we have Chevrolet -up 1 spot- gaining 28% this year and Mercedes entered the leaderboard by rising 37%.
The most sold vehicle this year is the Toyota Land Cruiser (-1.4%) with 13,101 units sold, overtaking the Nissan Patrol (-15.6%) registering 11,950 new sales this year. The Toyota Hilux (+11.6%) closes the podium and reports 10,543 new units sold.
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales for top 10 Brands and top 10 models.
