The association report attributed the downturn in vehicle output to falls in both the numbers of passenger vehicles, down 1.9 percent, and commercial vans, down 9.1 percent, to 115,469 and 37,134 vehicles respectively.
This was not offset in numerical terms by the 38.9 percent year-on-year surge in heavy goods vehicle production with a total of 4,024 trucks produced in Portugal in 2015.
Out of the overall total of 156,626 vehicles produced, some 150,248 were sent for export, a 3.4 percent year-on-year fall in export numbers.
As regards target markets, the European Union took in 77.9 percent of Portuguese-produced vehicles, with Germany accounting for 25.4 percent of total output with Spain and the United Kingdom also both significant markets holding shares of 13 percent and 10.1 percent respectively.
In international terms, China is the only major non-European Union export market for the multinational produced Portuguese vehicles, absorbing 11.3 percent of output.