But it's becoming a Continent-wide phenomenon. More bikes were sold in than cars — for the first time since World War II.

This prompted us to look at the figures across the 27 member states of the European Union for both and . New-car registrations for Cyprus and Malta weren't available, so we took them out of the comparison.

Here's what we found: Bicycle sales outpaced new-car sales last year in every one of those countries, except Belgium and Luxembourg. The top five countries by bicycle sales can be seen in the top chart.