Turkey’s car, LCV market expands 13.1 percent

The sales of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles in Turkey improved 13.1 percent year on year in the first three quarters, an industrial group report showed on Oct. 4.

As many as 558,145 vehicles were sold across Turkey in the January-September period this year, the Automotive Distributors' Association (ODD) said in a statement.

Passenger car sales went up by 11.9 percent so far this year compared to the same period in 2020 to 434,800 units, while light commercial vehicle sales went up by 17.5 percent to 123,345 units.

In September, however, the passenger car and light commercial vehicle market decreased by 36.9 percent to 57,141 units.

The decrease in September was 39.1 percent in the passenger car market (43,408 units), and 28.9 percent in the light commercial vehicle market (13,733 units).

In comparison to the average last 10-year September sales, passenger car and light commercial vehicle market showed a decrease of 8.3 percent.

When studied in terms of engine type, petrol car sales took a share of 66.1 percent (287,288 units). Diesel car sales took a share of 20.1 percent (87,415 units), hybrid car sales took a share of 8.5 percent (36,824 units), autogas car share was 5 percent (21,713 units) and 1,560 electric cars were also sold.

In retail sales in the first nine months of this year, Fiat models dominated the domestically-produced passenger car market with 56,614 sales. Renault (47,535 sales), Toyota (32,851 sales), Honda (18,085 sales), Hyundai (17,021 sales) and Ford (2,041) models followed the Italian brand in this category.

In the same period, a total of 44,933 Volkswagen passenger car models were imported. Dacia (22,493 sales), Skoda (21,873 sales),...