Italy was the first country in western Europe to suffer the impact of the Covid-19 crisis. On March 8th, the Italian government quarintined the country and shut down most businesses.

This situation is cutting the annual mileage to roughly 10% of the overall driving distance. This is around 400 billion km a year for passenger cars.

The impact of the aftermarket business in Italy:

Has already been measured by the GiPA Italia teams as a loss of 9,7% to 18,3% in 2020, according to twoo scenarios:

• The first one with a recovery from June to August in terms of driving distance, with a boost in workshop demand over the summer time.
• The second one simulates a slow restart of the activity in the following month, related to the 9,1% decline of the Italian economy this year.

The first scenario is the most likely one, as the use of the privatly driven cars could be prefered by urban commuters looking for more sanitary care and avoiding the tube, bus, train, plane.

What is the perspective of the aftermarket business in Italy?

Smart working is available only for 50% of the “active” drivers (in terms of socio economical definition) and close to 40% of the population is “non active”, for this part of the population, driving to your work place is not the main use of the car.

On medium long term, the new registration crisis since beginning of March (down from 1,9 m in 2019 to 1,25 m if things are doing well in 2020!) will have a sequel in the coming years.

Recovery will be slow, and lower the NR market for the next 3-4 years. It is the second crisis for the industry in 10 years, the last one took 4 years to recover from, from 2012 to 2015.

The OES network will suffer in the coming years because of low registrations, and IAM players will face the poor generations aged 7 to 10 years of age, where roughly 4 m cars are missing.

For any further information, please click here to contact GiPA

Care and maintenance will be essential for the aftermarket business in Italy

The aftermarket, which showed to be resilient in year 2008-2009 and 2012-2015 is now facing big challenges for both large segments: care and maintenance. Who will be able to “improvise, adapt and overcome?” using the words of Tom “Gunny” Highway.

GiPA Italia team will track, monitor and anticipate the impact of these changes in the following weeks, thanks to the accurate analysis of the Aftermarket Trends Observatory survey.

For any further information, please click here to contact GiPA