With Fiat riding a recovery in several key European new car markets during March, its successful month has extended to the French market with the Italian carmaker seeing its sales climb by more than a quarter year-on-year, a performance that comfortably outperforms the overall market.

Fiat has already seen big gains in Italy and Germany during March and this has effect carried across to France where demand for smaller, efficient cars has once again seen consumers heading into the Fiat showrooms. The whole French market saw 204,095 cars registered last month which was up by 8 pct on the same month a year ago. The Fiat Group, with 9,228 registrations during March massively outperformed the overall market and it was up by more than a quarter (25.1 pct) to increase its total market share to 4.52 pct.

The Fiat brand (including the Fiat Professional and Abarth divisions) saw 7,875 registrations in March meaning that is was the seventh best-selling brand on the French market. Alfa Romeo was down in 24th place with 903 cars sold and it was up 85.4 pct while Lancia two places further back accounted for 413 cars and also far outperformed the overall market as it was up 29.5 pct.

This means that Alfa Romeo took an 0.44 pct share of the market in March while Lancia's slice was 0.2 pct. Of the niche prestige sports/luxury Fiat Group brands, Ferrari (- 15.4 pct) sold 22 of its sports cars in March while Maserati (+ 36.4 pct) added 15 more cars.

For the first quarter of this year 505,456 new cars have been sold in France which is down 3.9 pct on the same period last year. Of this half million new cars, Fiat Group accounts for 24,132 units which puts it up 13.7 pct year-on-year and gives it a 4.77 pct stake of the market so far this year.

Splitting up the Fiat Group brands Fiat accounts for 20,247 cars to give it a 4.01 pct share of the market and put it up 10.4 pct year-on-year. Alfa Romeo has sold 2,549 cars in France so far this year, up 46.7 pct year-on-year and landing it on an 0.5 pct share of the market. Lancia has sold 1,205 cars and its also up year-on-year, by 14.9 pct and it has an 0.24 pct share of the French market. Meanwhile in the first quarter Ferrari (+ 16.7 pct) accounts for 63 cars and Maserati (+67.5 pct) 67.