New cars versus used imports

Share of new cars in passenger-car registrations, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, the Netherlands, Spain, Poland, Ireland, Czechia, Romania, Luxembourg, Belgium and Austria, latest three years

A registration statistic counts every car that enters a country's register for the first time, and in much of northern and eastern Europe that is not mainly new cars. A car bought second-hand in Germany and driven to Vilnius is a first registration in Lithuania just as a new Toyota sold in Helsinki is one in Finland. The split between the two matters for reading any other figure on this site, from brand rankings to the electric share, so this page shows it for every country that publishes it. Germany is absent because the KBA tables cover new registrations only. The United Kingdom is absent too: the Department for Transport publishes no split between new cars and used imports, and its data is quarterly; its quarterly page counts both together.

Belgium's used column counts every registration of a car registered before, in Belgium or abroad: DIV's file does not separate used imports from resales, which is why it shows no import age.

Austria's used column is Statistik Austria's Gebrauchtzulassungen, every registration of a car registered before, a change of owner in Austria or an import alike; the two are not separated and no import age is published.

Where the markets stand

Spain has the most new-car-heavy market of the 13 shown: in July 2026, 86.9% of its 118 217 registrations were new cars. At the other end, Lithuania registered 13 925 used imports against 4 455 new cars in June 2026, a new share of only 24.1%. Luxembourg (68.8%), Finland (65.5%), Ireland (57.5%), Czechia (57.3%), the Netherlands (53.0%), Estonia (45.4%), Poland (37.4%), Latvia (35.6%), Belgium (33.1%), Romania (26.9%) and Austria (25.2%) lie between them. The imports themselves differ too: the average used import was 5.7 years old in the Netherlands but 11.9 years old in Romania.

Compared with the same month a year earlier, the new-car share is unchanged in Spain, up 0.4 points in Luxembourg, up 5.5 points in Finland, down 3.2 points in Ireland, down 2.3 points in Czechia, up 0.5 points in the Netherlands, down 1.1 points in Estonia, down 2.9 points in Poland, up 0.7 points in Latvia, up 2.9 points in Belgium, down 6.4 points in Romania, down 0.3 points in Austria and up 1.9 points in Lithuania. Where the origin is published, the pattern is the same: in Lithuania, Germany supplied 33.9% of used imports in June 2026 and the Netherlands 8.2%; in Finland, Germany supplied 42.9% of used imports in August 2026 and Sweden 30.9%; in Luxembourg, Germany supplied 53.7% of used imports in August 2026 and Belgium 20.9%.

Why the Baltic markets import so many used cars

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have no domestic car production, incomes below the EU average and, since joining the single market in 2004, free movement of goods with Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the Nordic countries, which sell off large fleets of three-to-ten-year-old cars every year. Lithuania in particular developed a trade in importing, repairing and re-exporting used cars, which is one reason its registration counts are high relative to the size of the country and why its register loses a large share of each month's cars to export again within a year or two; the Lithuanian methodology page explains how this survivorship effect is measured. Finland sits between the two groups: a large new-car market with a smaller but steady flow of used imports, most of them fairly young cars from Germany and Sweden.

What the split changes

Three things follow from the split. Model rankings in import-heavy markets are dominated by models that were popular in Germany five to ten years ago, which is why a BMW 3 Series or a Volkswagen Passat can top a Baltic table in a month when no dealer sold many of them new; the monthly pages show new and used columns side by side so the two can be told apart. Electric shares are diluted by imports, since a ten-year-old import is almost never electric, although used Teslas now form a visible part of the Baltic electric tables. And average fleet age, CO₂ and safety statistics for these countries are driven by what is imported rather than by what is sold new, so a policy that changes import taxes or emissions-based registration fees shows up in these series faster than any change in new-car incentives. Each country's imports page breaks the used cars down by age bracket, and where the register records it, by country of origin and by brand.

Definitions

A car counts as new when its first registration anywhere is the one in the country concerned, and as a used import when it was registered somewhere else first. Latvia additionally reports a "180-day" class of imports first registered abroad less than six months earlier, which are included in used imports here. Age at import is the difference between the year of first registration and the year of the local registration, averaged over the month's used imports; Lithuania, Latvia, the Netherlands, Spain and Poland have day-precise dates, Estonia and Finland publish years only. The methodology pages linked from each market give the exact source tables and the checks applied to them: Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Netherlands, Spain, Poland, Ireland, Czechia, Romania, Luxembourg, Belgium and Austria.