While mid-sized SUVs dominate new car sales in Denmark, the typical Dane prefers smaller, older cars, a new report from AutoBranchen Danmark has found.
The average age of Denmark‘s car fleet now stands at its highest level for 30 years, at 9.6 years as of 2024. At the same time, the number of new cars under four years old has fallen to the lowest level for several years.
This increase is attributed to a shift in purchasing patterns, where older cars are remaining in use for longer, and fewer new cars enter the market, AutoBranchen Danmark said.
Smaller, gasoline-powered cars, or ‘microcars’, which were highly popular in Denmark during the 2010s, have contributed to this trend, with many Danes opting to keep their existing vehicles rather than replace them with newer models due to changes to tax legislation.
Danish drivers
As of January 1, 2025, the number of cars on Danish roads that are at least five years old has risen to 2.1 million, marking a more than 30% increase compared to 2020.
Between 2015 and 2020, this figure remained relatively stable at around 1.5 to 1.6 million cars.
At the same time, the number of newer cars under four years old has fallen from 794,000 in 2020 to approximately 620,000 in 2025. New car sales peaked in 2019, and are yet to return to the highs of the 2010s, the company said.
Electric car imports
“At AutoBranchen Danmark […] we also notice that the import of used electric cars has increased sharply in recent years,” commented Gitte Seeberg, CEO of AutoBranchen Danmark, adding that this is “a trend that is also helping to raise the average age of the car fleet.
“Microcars have proven to be cheap to run and command good second-hand prices, so Danes are holding on to them. We expect that a good number of Danes have been waiting for smaller and cheaper electric cars to come onto the market, as is slowly happening now.”
Mid-size SUVs dominate sales of cars under four years old, the data showed, accounting for over 27% of this group. Read more here.
