The European new car market was still down with declining sales in March and during the first quarter of 2013.
Automotive intelligence provider JATO’s key findings for Q1:
- New car sales in the European new car market declined by 10.2% in March and 9.8% year-to-date compared to the same quarter in 2012
- The UK was the only ‘big five’ market (UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy) to see any growth during the month (sales up 5.9%) and in Q1 (sales up 7.4% on Q1 2012)
- Of the ‘big five’ markets Germany experienced the largest drop in new car sales; almost 100,000 units in March (17.1%).
- Fiat was the only brand in the top 10 to record an increase in new car sales in March and BMW was the only brand in the top 10 to see an increase at the end of Q1 compared to 2012
- Three of the top ten models recorded an increase in March and Q1 new car sales: Renault’s Clio, Peugeot’s 208 and the BMW 3-Series.
Gareth Hession, vice president, research at JATO, said: “With the majority of the ‘big five’ markets struggling, most of the top ten brands are finding it difficult to increase sales, even with the introduction of new models.”
Sales by brand (top 10)
Jeremy has been a journalist for 30 years, 20 of which have been in business-to-business automotive. He was a writer and news editor on AM-sister brand Fleet News for three years before setting up the AM website. For the last five years he has been Bauer B2B’s head of digital helping to manage the digital assets of AM, together with Fleet News, Commercial Fleet, Rail and Smart Transport.
Watkin - 18/04/2013 21:25
VMs are offering improved terms on 1 yr old cars in exchange to sell new vehicles. My question is how many cars taken in part exchange are back on the road? We're getting false data - the UK is not in as good a shape as registrations suggest. Its spin in my v iew