New car sales improve, Fiat leads, Renault and Skoda compete for second place

Car producers and importers still believe that they will be able to sell about 300,000 new cars by the end of the year, which is still less than last year, but more than originally forecast for 2002. "New car sales have been constantly rising since March," claims Wojciech Drzewiecki from the au tomotive research company Samar. It is worth mentioning that four months ago the government introduced regulations, limiting the number of imported cars, which were flooding the market after customs duties were abolished. Ac cording to car market analysts this had a positive impact on the sales of new cars. "Soon there will be new regulations which will further limit the imports of used vehicles," added Drzewiecki. It seems that Italian Fiat will sell the largest number of vehicles - around 60,000. French Renault and Czech Skoda meanwhile are competing for second place. "We plan to keep a 10% share of the market and it seems that we will meet this plan. We have sold over 16,000 cars by the end of June," said Eliza Kruszewska from Renault Polska. Toyota Motor Poland is hoping to increases its market share from 4.6% last year to 8% for 2002. (Puls Biznesu, pp. 1, 5) M.M.