The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Car Sales Around the World.

The coronavirus epidemic has affected the automotive industry to a lesser extent than, for example, catering and tourism, which were completely closed, and it is still unknown when they will be able to start working at the same volume. However, the quarantine has also severely affected the car industry. Car sales in the post-virus period have declined, there are fewer deliveries, and car dealers are empty. This study covers the time period during the pandemic. The task of this work is to put rational hypotheses, test them and identify the real effect of the pandemic on the car industry market. The study will be conducted on the example of different countries. The ultimate goal of this article is to identify the factors that affect car sales during the pandemic, so that it would be possible to predict the number of cars sold based on available data. This paper examines COVID-19 factors and some economic and non-economic factors affecting the car sales worldwide. As for the study’s methodology, the research is solely based on the existing data, that are available at the official Oxford site, World Bank site and Car sales database. Using a linear regression model, a sample of 54 countries was analyzed. As for the results of the study, the expected result is to determine the degree of influence of factors associated with coronavirus infection on car sales in different countries of the world. After studying the pool of indicators obtained from the Internet, the degrees of influence of all factors were determined. Among the new significant predictors of car sales success were factors such as containment health index and facial coverings restrictions. This result can be taken into account in the decision-making process of automotive industry professionals.