Despite the pandemic, dealers pushed on with the event which, in normal times, is when they make up to 30% of their annual sales.

To conform with national pandemic measures, dealerships limited customer visits, asking clients to leave the family at home. To maximise sales opportunities and minimise the chances of crowds forming, the festival was extended to 20 days.

According to Ed Goedert, former director of Autopolis, speaking on RTL on Monday, this edition was “rational, with less traffic in the garages.”

Marc Devillet, general manager and managing director of Autopolis, made a similar observation halfway through the festival but added that it was conducive to a better exchange.

“Looking at the figures, we can see that the sales volumes are very acceptable, even with closed Sundays. The sale is more clinical, the salesmen have more time with the customers,” Marc Devillet said.

A thousand online appointments announced by Losch

Miriam Eisenmenger, group marketing manager at Losch, which markets, among other things, the country's most popular car brand, Volkswagen, stressed that “the public was there. The majority of them registered via our online reservation service. We were able to register more than 1,000 online appointments within the Losch garage network. We are very satisfied with this result and believe that this tool has a future.”

It was too early to publish figures on the number of vehicles sold.

“Given the current circumstances, we are reasonably satisfied with the sales figures. Experience allows us to take a step back, we often have to take the whole month of February into account in order to be able to draw conclusions in terms of official figures. Of course, we are still hoping for additional sales,” said Michel Louro, COO of Losch Retail.

As far as the popular models are concerned, “demand for SUVs remains very high and we have seen strong demand for our new models, such as the VW Golf 8, the Skoda Octavia, the Seat Leon and the Audi A3. The big news this year in terms of interest is around electric vehicles, such as the ID4 or the Skoda Enyaq, for example,” concluded Miriam Eisenmenger.

This article was originally published on Paperjam.lu in French. It has been translated and edited for Delano.