New car registrations in Romania dropped by 59% to below 12,000 units in June this year, while the number of used car registrations almost tripled to over 17,000 during the period, as compared to June 2008, according to official data released on Tuesday.

Dacia remains the best sold car, with sales down from 7,600 to below 4,000 new units. Renault remains the best sold imported brand, but sales halved to about 950 units. The same happened to Volkswagen, while Opel reported an even sharper fall, of about 60%.

For used cars, new registrations upped 2.7 times to about 17,700 in June this year, given that June 2008 was one of the weakest months for used car registrations last year.