Car market recovery?
June 17th, 2009 by Richard Aucock
EUROPEAN new car sales figures for May have been released – and show tentative signs of recovery.
While the new car market is down 13.1 percent year-to-date, this is a 2.4 percent improvement on declines the previous month.
It is scrappage that is being thanked for this. Germany was up nearly 40 percent in May – that’s an improvement of a fifth on April’s figures!
‘If Germany provides a template for the other markets where scrappage schemes have been introduced, we may be at the very beginning of a period of recovery in Europe’, said JATO head David Di Girolamo.
‘It’s far too early to know what the sustained effects of the incentives will be, but at a time when the industry needs to see some rays of hope, it’s encouraging to witness some improvement.’
Big winner was the Volkswagen Golf. This stayed top car in Europe, and also upped monthly sales by nearly a third.
The Ford Fiesta, in second, did even better, with sales improving by 56 percent in May, and by nearly a third year-to-date. The Fiat Panda, Fiat Grande Punto and Volkswagen Polo also all did better.
Evidence of the big shift witnessed in new car buyer trends over the past few years, said Di Girolamo.
‘Today, upper medium cars have lost significant market share to the smaller models, and most recently it is the scrappage schemes that have been driving that trend.’
Of Europe’s top 10 brands, all chalked up declines for year-to-date sales. BMW was biggest faller of all, down a staggering 24.8 percent.
Top brand Volkswagen fell 2 percent, with Ford down 5.8 percent, and Opel Vauxhall down 18.6 percent.
European top 10 sales league
1 Volkswagen Golf
2 Ford Fiesta
3 Peugeot 207
4 Vauxhall Corsa
5 Fiat Punto
6 Fiat Panda
7 Vauxhall Astra
8 Ford Focus
9 Volkswagen Polo
10 Renault Clio
Tags: europe, jato, sales, Volkswagen