Sales of new cars down by almost a third in first seven months to 217,000

Sales of new passenger cars up to the end of July amounted to 217,000, down by almost a third from the first seven months of 2000. The fall in demand coincided with a zl.1,500 rise in the level of spending on a vehicle, increasing the average price paid for a new car to zl.47,600. According to Wojciech Drzewiecki, general manager of auto industry research company Samar, it will now be difficult to achieve sales of 350,000 cars this year, with 320,000 a more realistic target. The top-selling car manufacturer on the Polish market in the first seven months of the year was Fiat, followed by Daewoo and Skoda. The only car-maker to report an increase in sales was Renault, which has sold 17,200 vehicles so far this year. (Rzeczpospolita, p. B2) P.W.