Fiat, Toyota, Ford lead sixth consecutive monthly drop in Europe car sales

Paul McVeigh, Automotive News Europe, A Crain Publication

Fiat SpA, Toyota Motor Corp. and Ford Motor Co. led a sixth straight monthly drop in European car sales as demand for new vehicles continues to fall following the ending or phasing out of government trade-in incentives programmes.

Registrations in the region fell 9.2 percent to 1.26 million vehicles in September from 1.39 million a year earlier, said ACEA, the European automakers association, in data released 16 Oct. Nine-month sales dropped 3.7 percent to 10.6 million, the group added.

Deliveries at Fiat group declined 21 percent to 86,773, hit by steep drops for the Italian automaker's Fiat and Lancia brands. Combined Toyota and Lexus registrations tumbled 21 percent to 57 573, while Ford dropped 20 percent to 108 700 units.

Volkswagen group, Europe's biggest carmaker with a 21 percent market share, saw sales fall 4 percent to 262,624 with an 11 percent drop for VW brand offset by a 10.5 percent gain at Audi and a 5 percent increase at Seat.

General Motors Co.'s Opel/Vauxhall subsidiary saw volume fall 5 percent to 104 938.
Luxury rebound

Premium car sales, however, are rebounding after a poor 2009.

Daimler registered growth with 7 percent more Mercedes-Benz cars sold in Europe than in September 2009 and 2.5 percent more Smart cars.

BMW brand sales grew 2 percent but the Munich company's Mini unit suffered a 4 percent decline.

The region's five biggest markets of Germany, Italy, France, Spain and the UK all declined last month, with sales in Spain slumping 27 percent, the steepest drop.

Germany, Europe's largest car market, whose scrapping scheme ran out at the beginning of September last year, saw an 18-percent dip.

Sales fell 8 percent in France and there was an 19-percent fall in Italy as this year's figures are compared to the strong sales seen last year when many scrapping schemes were still in force. UK sales declined by 9 percent.

The German car market should return to growth towards the end of 2010, when the aftershock from the end of the government scrapping scheme should have worked its way through the system, industry association VDA said at the start of October.

Smaller markets such as Ireland and Latvia expanded considerably, posting growth from very low levels in 2009 and 2008.

Bloomberg and Reuters contributed to this report.

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