European Car Distribution Handbook (ECDH)
European Car Distribution Handbook 2025
The comprehensive guide to manufacturer-franchised new car sales and aftersales networks in Europe
The European Car Distribution Handbook is a comprehensive analysis outlining the size and shape of franchised car dealer networks across Europe, providing a unique and valuable resource for anyone working in the areas of network planning or analysis. The report includes data of the name and ownership status of national sales companies and distributors, the number of individual entities that own dealerships, and the number of franchise points and their function, split between sales and aftersales networks, for revised totals this year of 50 brands across 35 European markets. These changes reflect the addition of the leading Chinese brands and the impossibility of getting reliable data for Ukraine, Russia and Belarus due to the continuing effects of the Russian invasion.
Against a recent background of some attempts at innovation in distribution models from both established OEMs and newcomers, physical networks remain the dominant channel choice, albeit a minority use direct sales models rather than working with independent dealers using either franchise or agency contracts. Within this introduction we comment on the innovations in both physical and online networks, but the scale of these is not yet on a scale that compromises benchmarking using the core data alone.
The data in this edition of the European Car Distribution Handbook refers to the network position as of 1st January 2025. Sales data refers to total new passenger car registrations (retail and wholesale) for the preceding year (i.e. full-year 2024), as does parc data where available. Where network and sales data are not provided and no information was available from own research, it is our understanding that there was no authorised distribution channel for that brand in that market on 1st January 2025.
ECDH is available as a PDF document and separately priced as a Microsoft Excel file. If you wish to purchase a copy of the European Car Distribution Handbook 2025, please contact projectoffice@icdp.net
Below, links to a presentation, video and press release on the current 2025 version.