Is Brazil about reach its automotive market potential?

Brazil is the fastest growing of the world’s largest ten auto markets. Ian Henry looks at the reasons behind its dynamism

The rise in the Brazilian auto market in 2025 is driven partly by rising imports but also rising local production, which is expected to increase by nearly 7% over the year. However, although Brazil’s overall market is growing, results for the first five months of 2025 show a rise of just 3.4% for locally produced cars, to slightly more than 743,000. Meanwhile, registrations of imported cars rose 19.3% to 187,000. Brazil is also a unique market because of the predominance of flex-fuel vehicles, with locally supplied powertrains. Flex fuel vehicles represented almost 75% of light vehicle registrations in the first five months of 2025, down around 4% the same period in 2024.