The Fiat Grande Punto and Fiat 500 (the latter seen here in forthcoming 500 C guise during the 8 in Punto event at the Fiat Open Lounge in Milan last weekend) have both proved popular with French car buyers this year.

Fiat Group Automobiles' strong sales across the key European new car markets has continued into France where all three of its brands have posted significant year-on-year increases during May and comfortably outperformed a rising market. Boosted by French government financial incentives to scrap older more polluting cars, the new car market saw 97,872 registrations last month which was up 14 percent year-on-year.

All the Fiat Group Automobiles' (FGA) brands - Fiat, Alfa Romeo and Lancia - performed very strongly and comfortably beat the overall market's 14 percent rise. The Fiat brand led the way with 8,672 registrations which meant it was up by 24 percent year-on-year. Alfa Romeo too had a very strong month with French car buyers choosing the new MiTo, and it added a further 1,289 units to end the month up an impressive 38.5 percent year-on-year. Meanwhile FGA's luxury brand, Lancia, saw its sales more than double year-on-year and it accounted for 532 registrations in May which put it up 56.9 percent on the same month a year ago. Of the Fiat Group's specialist sports/luxury brands, Ferrari sold 54 cars and Maserati added another 30 units last month.

The year-on-year performance of the three Fiat Group Automobiles' brands compared very favourably with its rivals on the French new car market. The three domestic brands had quite mixed results last month: Renault (40,736) was down 4.1 percent, while PSA's saw the Peugeot (35.282) brand mirror the overall market rise as it was up 14.4 percent while Citroën (32,348) fared best of all as it was up 28.1 percent. However as a combined total the national carmakers were up 9.9 percent year-on-year and this easily underperformed the overall market's rise. Other strong performing brands in France last month included Dacia (3,309; + 41.9 percent), Hyundai (2,422; + 50.6 percent), Kia (2,066; + 38.1 percent) and Porsche (272; + 56.3 percent).

After the first five months of the year the Fiat brand has seen 36,250 registrations of its cars so far in France which puts it up 11.1 percent year-on-year. FGA's two niche brands are also well up year-on-year: Alfa Romeo has seen 4,683 cars sold from January to May and is up 26.4 percent while Lancia has 2,154 registrations and is up 15.6 percent. Meanwhile Ferrari has 143 registrations so far this year and is up 62.5 percent and Maserati with 128 sales mixed between the GranTurismo and Quattroporte models is up 29.3 percent.

The results by the three FGA brands easily outshine the French national carmakers which have posted unspectacular year-on-year results after the first five months, only Citroën is in positive territory and is up 10.3 percent while Peugeot (-6.4 percent) and Renault (-5.3 percent) are both down on the same period last year. As well as the FGA brands the biggest winners so far this year are Chevrolet with 6,483 registrations putting it up 98.1 percent year-on-year although this figure is distorted due to limited selling in this period last year while Subaru (679; + 75.0 percent), Porsche (860; +19.1 percent) and Daihatsu (850; 19.2 percent) have all fared well so far this year.