Fiat Group Automobiles (FGA) has continued its strong sales surge in Germany through July with Fiat (+94.9 pct), Alfa Romeo (+60.0 pct) and Lancia (+45.3 pct) all significantly outperforming the overall market which surged by 29.5 percent year-on-year. Last month a total of 339,976 new cars were sold across Germany, the healthy year-on-year increase coming thanks to a government sponsored 'scrappage' incentive scheme that has seen the market given a strong boost in recent months.

The Fiat brand (including Abarth sales) was comfortably the best performer of the three FGA brands, up 94.9 percent year-on-year after selling 13,855 cars with German consumers shunned bigger, more-polluting models in favour of smaller, efficient ones. It's performance, driven by showroom demand for the Panda, 500 and Grande Punto, was the third best year-on-year for any brand, beaten only by Lada (+159.8 percent) and Kia (+107.9 percent) although these two came from much lower bases, accounting for 465 and 4,764 cars respectively during July. This added up to give Fiat a 4.1 share of the market.

Alfa Romeo was buoyed during July by demand for the MiTo and FGA's sporty brand sold a total of 1,259 cars in Germany which put it up 60.0 percent year-on-year and gave it an 0.4 percent stake of the total market. Lancia added 324 cars to complete a rosy picture for FGA and it was up 45.3 percent year-on-year.

Other big winners in Germany last month included the three major French brands: Renault/Dacia (22,918 units; +70.2 percent), Peugeot (12,958 units; +73.5 percent) and Citroën (11,114 units; +80.7 percent) while Hyundai (6,857 units; 92.7 percent) continued to make inroads into the market, as it has done across Europe all year. VW (68,023; units; 27.3 percent) was the best selling brand in Germany last month while its Skoda division was up 66.8 percent after shifting 15,393 cars and the SEAT arm rose 59.1 percent with 6,701 sales. Germany's most prestigious luxury brands continued to fall from favour with buyers: Mercedes-Benz (22,575 units; -30.1 percent), BMW/MINI (22,568 units; -13.5 percent) and Audi (20,867 units; - 4.0 percent) couldn't get themselves anywhere near the market's rise. One of the big losers last month was Fiat's new U.S. alliance partner Chrysler Group which sold just 678 vehicles in July combined across its Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep brands, which equated to a 44.6 percent drop on the same month last year.

After the first seven months of the year a total of 2,399,381 passenger cars have been sold in Germany putting the market up 26.4 percent on the same period last year. With 116,342 cars sold so far this year Fiat has more than doubled its tally for last year (105.4 percent) and has taken a 4.8 percent share of all sales. Alfa Romeo has also doubled its sales for the year-to-date, its 7,898 units putting it up 101.2 percent on January to July 2008. It has taken a 0.3 percent share of all sales. Lancia, with its compact three-model range comprising of the Ypsilon, Musa and Delta, rounds out the positive performance from FGA with 2,419 sales for the year-to-date to leave it up 20.1 year-on-year. The Chrysler Group's market share in Germany has collapsed this year and for the year-to-date it has sold 5,224 vehicles to leave it down 45.8 percent year-on-year.