Spain is eighth in the world for car manufacturing

Ninth-placed Brazil is not far behind, producing 2.69 million, up by 25% with just 150,000 fewer than Spain.

According to the International Motor Vehicle Manufacturers' Organisation (OICA), speaking at Geneva's World Automobile Fair, despite Spain's having seen a 1.3% reduction in the number of cars produced last year – failing to meet its target of three million – it has retained its place at number eight in the world, even though the gap has closed considerably with Brazil due to the South American country’s buoyant results.

The previous year, Canada was number nine, with 2.37 million cars produced, or 516,000 fewer than Spain.

But taking into account the sizes of Brazil and Canada compared with Spain shows that its results are still impressive in a global context.

Although the shrinking of the industry in Spain means it is in danger of losing ground, the country still makes 2.9% of the world’s vehicles, a slight drop on its 3% quota in 2016.

And it would be very hard to compete with the top three countries given their deeply-entrenched manufacturing industries: China produced 29.1 million cars last year, making it number one in the world, up by 3.2% on 2016, whilst the USA manufactured 11.18 million, an increase of 8.1% and Japan’s production rose by 5.3% to 9.69 million.

Germany’s production shrank by 1.8% in 2017, to a total of 5.64 million, but kept hold of its number four slot, whilst India, in fifth, produced 4.7 million cars, having seen the industry grow by 5.8%.

Also ahead of Spain were South Korea, which saw a reduction of 2.7% in vehicles made in 2017, down to 4.11 million, and México, which manufactured 13% more, up to 4.06 million.

Additionally, Spain beat France into 10th place, despite the neighbour country’s having shifted 6.5% more cars in 2017, producing a total of 2.22 million.

Worldwide, 97.3 million cars were manufactured last year – an increase of 2.4% on the 95 million produced in 2016.

More cars are made in China than in the whole of Europe – last year, 22.16 million were manufactured on the continent, an increase of 3.1%.

The OICA says the world increase in vehicle production is even more impressive in light of the ‘political uncertainty and economic risk in certain countries’, possibly indirectly referring to Brexit.

This year is expected to see world vehicle manufacturing break the 98-million barrier for the first time, of which 86 million will be cars as opposed to vans, lorries, buses and commercial vehicles in general.

Photograph: Seat