Malta may have a car overpopulation problem but it is not the worst in the EU, if that’s any consolation.

Luxembourg, with 672 passenger cars per 1,000 inhabitants, heads the list with the highest “motorisation rate”, figures released by Eurostat show.

The statistics agency said Luxembourg’s position was probably influenced by cross-border workers using company cars registered in the country.

Eurostat’s wide-ranging publication on passenger cars compared figures across the EU, placing Malta fourth, with 608 passenger cars per 1,000 inhabitants.

The figures are from 2013.

The statistics leave no doubt that Italians love their cars: with 619 cars per 1,000 inhabitants, the Mediterranean country, home to the Fiat brand, came in second. Lithuania came in third, with 609 cars.

In Malta, more than half the passenger cars are older than 10 years

At the other end of the scale, a low motorisation rate was recorded for Romania, with just 235 cars, despite growth in the number of registered vehicles of almost 11 per cent over the last five years.

But the figures also provided a snapshot of the type of cars that tickled the fancy of Europeans. Petrol and diesel cars are still by far the most popular passenger cars.

Cars powered by alternative fuels, including hybrid cars, only made up a small portion of the fleet of passenger cars in the EU in 2013.

Cars with petrol powered engines made up the majority of registered passenger cars in most of the countries, while diesel powered passenger cars dominated in only five Mem-ber States.

Of the 13,000 cars registered in Malta in 2013, about 8,000 had petrol engines, while some 5,000 had diesel engines. Only 27 cars ran on alternative fuel.

When looking at petrol and diesel engines together, the medium-sized engines (between 1400cc and 1900cc) dominated the passenger car fleet in most EU member states but in Malta the preferred choice was for the smallest engines (below 1400cc).

The share of small petrol-driven passenger cars was 56 per cent of the total vehicles in Malta.

In 2013, Lithuania had by far the highest share of passenger cars more than 10 years old (85 per cent), followed by Poland (75 per cent) and Latvia (72 per cent).

But in Malta, more than half of the passenger cars were older than 10 years, the same proportion as in Portugal, the Czech Republic, Romania, Finland, Croatia and Hungary.

In contrast, the shares of the ‘youngest’ passenger cars (less than two years old) were highest in Belgium (23 per cent), Austria (20 per cent), Ireland (18 per cent) and Sweden (17 per cent).

Passenger cars in the EU

Data source: The Eurostat/ITF/UNECE Common Questionnaire on Inland Transport. For more information, visit http://bit.ly/1POK2UM.

kurt.sansone@timesofmalta.com