I've been scratching around Statbel and found some interesting historical data. So a big call out to them for making this available. It's not often older data is accessible. I have a lot more but I don't know how much statistical information on Belgium is of interest.
As for the chart to the right, some obvious and predictable things are there but also things to surprise. I've shaded the USA in a different colour and they were more popular than I expected. Belgium wasn't protected like the larger European markets were at the time so that would have helped.
I'm not sure if supply was an issue for some brands as they rebuilt after the war and sourcing materials may have still been problematic even ten years after hostilities ceased.
I did think of combining brands belonging to the same company but then thought seeing the brands separate would be more enlightening anyway.
Ford Europe was one brand, sourcing cars from England, France and Germany. Opel and Vauxhall were both owned by GM but both brands were sold their products which were quite different.
Some brands are now only found in history books (and blogs like this). DKW became Audi. Austin, Morris and several other English brands were merged and became MG Rover which was eventually killed off altogether. Shameful.
Enjoy the data. It took a while to assemble. The source seems to have total sales slightly higher than is generally found elsewhere. It could be down to what constitutes a passenger car or even if new cars imported privately are counted or not.
The car above is the Ford Taunus, sourced from Germany. The name used from 1939 to 1994 and unusually covered two different sized models. The above is the smaller car which went from 1952-59.
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