ACEA Lowers Outlook for Car Sales in EU This Year

Sales of passenger vehicles in the EU could drop as much as 10% to 11.92 million units this year, carmaker group ACEA tells The Wall Street Journal.

The organization had predicted in June that volume would decline 7% in 2012. The ACEA did not elaborate on the reasons for its lower forecast.

But since the group's previous prediction, the region's demand shrank 8% to 935,400 units in July and 9% to 688,200 units last month. The latter was the lowest level for August sales in the EU since the ACEA began collecting the data in 1990.

In the January-August period registrations in the region fell 7% year over year to 8.27 million vehicles, the group reports.