The impact of COVID-19 (COVID) has made itself known all over the world.  And, the sales numbers for Europe’s first quarter of the year show its impact.  Unfortunately, the news is mostly terrible, with a couple of exceptions.

Overall, the European moto industry was in decent shape.  2020 started well, with sales showing a robust increase of 11.4% in January.  February’s sales data showed a 7.7% increase.

But the COVID pandemic quickly put the brakes on.  Hard.  March sales were down 37.5%, and April sales plunged a very significant 57.9% as the impacts of COVID took hold.

Notably, the 57.9% sales decrease is an average percentage, and some European nations saw sales fall catastrophically.  Of the 28 European countries, Italy fared the worse with a decline of 96.9%.  Not far off of Italy’s sales tally is Spain, which saw its sales drop by 93.5%.  Other significant decreases include the UK, down 84%, and France, down 82.6 percent.

There is some good news, however, albeit in only a couple of countries.  Sales in the Netherlands rose by 8.1%.  But even more astonishingly, sales in Sweden are up by 81.1%!  Although the two countries don’t make up a large percentage of total European Union sales, it’s still amazing that the two could post gains during COVID.

Looking forward, Motorcyclesdata.com says that the uniqueness of the COVID pandemic requires that forecasts be adjusted month by month.  However, they say their most current projection predicts that sales in Europe will fall by 27.4% for the year.  That percentage reflects a reduction of 1.1 million units.

While that may be a dire prediction, they say that the good news is that their latest outlook shows improvement from last month’s forecast.  Let’s hope that the remainder of the second quarter will bring better news.

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