Warsaw (Puls Biznesu) – Sales results of passenger car producers in March have changed the ranking. Toyota is still the leader with 2,535 cars sold (preliminary forecasts amounted to 2,350). Skoda traditionally takes the second place with about 2,300 cars sold (forecasts: 2,200). But the third place is a surprise. According to preliminary data, Ford took it with 2,146 cars sold (forecast 2,180). Opel may be the fourth in the ranking. Although the company refused to give detailed data concerning March sales, it earlier estimated it would amount to 2,100.
FIAT, which also refused to tell, how many cars were sold, forecast earlier it would be 2,050 cars, which would give the company the fifth position. ‘FIAT has more and more competitors among Korean producers. Unless the company organises big, special marketing campaigns, its situation will not improve’, one of the Italian producer competitors commented. However, in the quarterly rankings, FIAT would still take the third place after Toyota and Skoda.
Samar, the company monitoring Polish car market, estimated 21,000 passenger cars were sold in the market in March. This would be more than in February (19,800) but still much worse than in March 2004, when 39,000 new cars were sold. Wojciech Drzewiecki, Samar CEO, expects 280,000 may be sold this year. In 2004, 318,000 new cars were sold.Poland/Enterprises/Automotive