A near two per cent rise in West Europe’s April car sales, like a first taste of warm spring sunshine after the longest and most drawn-out winter for decades, simply couldn’t fail but trigger a large sigh of relief from Europe’s carmakers, importers and distributors.

April’s minor uplift in sales to just over 1 million units was the first advance after 18 successive months of tumbling sales, tempting some optimists to the view that at long last the very worst of the economic crisis in the eurozone may finally be over....more