European new car sales are being buffeted at present by a sharp slowdown in consumer demand mainly due to the ending of region-wide state-supported "scrappage" schemes and in particular this has hit the Fiat Group with the two major markets to be most affected in May being Italy and Germany which had recorded impressive sales by Fiat Group during the same month a year ago and as a result the Italian firm's market share fell from 9.1 to 7.8 percent year-on-year.

Demand for new cars in the EU declined for the second month this year in May and five months into the year, the EU has counted just 1.9 percent more vehicles sold than over the same period a year ago. The cumulative total for the year-to-date amounts to 5,943,096 new cars.

In May, 1,129,508 vehicles were registered in the EU. While Germany registered the most cars sold, it also recorded the biggest sales decrease year-on-year (-35.1 percent) in registrations of all major markets, followed by Italy (-13.8 percent) and France (-11.5 percent). The UK (+13.5 percent), where Fiat showed a very promising upturn in sales year-on-year, and Spain (+44.6 percent), increased registrations compared to the low levels observed last year. Slovakia saw its market shrink the most (-41.8 percent) while Ireland expanded the most (+70.6 percent).

From January to May, new car registrations totaled 5,943,096 units. Of the most important markets, Germany was the only one recording a downturn (-27.7 percent) and after a very strong sales surge during May 2009 on this market the Fiat Group suffered harshly last month as it gave up all those sales gains. France (+7.2 percent), Italy (+7.9 percent), the UK (+22.0 percent) and Spain (+43.5 percent) all posted growth. The largest increase was noted in Portugal (+56.3 percent) while the steepest decline was found in Romania (-49.0 percent).

Fiat Group saw its sales fall by 26,000 units year-on-year last month, taken across the whole of Europe (including the EU and EFTA signatories combined), dropping from 116,408 units in May last year to 90,482 for the month just gone, a decline of 22.3 percent. It was a dismal performance made worse in that was bettered by all its rivals, only Toyota (-21.2 percent) came close to Fiat, but the Japanese carmaker only has aroound half the sales footprint of the Italian carmaker in Europe. GM turned in the next worse performance (-19.1 percent) but it still allowed the U.S. carmaker to beat the Fiat Group for the month by more than 5,000 units and push Fiat down to sixth place for the month as well as closing up to just over 500 units behind for the year-to-date. All the major carmaking groups though were negative year-on-year for the month apart from Renault (including its low-cost Dacia brand) which continued its very impressive recent run and was up 6.8 percent year-on-year for May to 121,052 units.

The Fiat brand saw a total of 72,900 registrations last month across the whole of Europe which was down 22.4 percent year-on-year and resulted in its share of the overall European market slipping from 7.4 to 6.3 percent. Lancia was again the best performer from the Fiat Group Automobiles (FGA) brand portfolio with total sales for May of 8,931 units, the "luxury" division's market share thus remaining unchanged on 0.8 percent, while 'sports' marque Alfa Romeo easily retained its traditional position as FGA's ugly duckling, its sales fell by more than a quarter from 10,919 units last May to 8,057 units this May, equalling a 26.2 percent drop. The Fiat Group's niche luxury/performance brands, Ferrari and Maserati, saw combined European sales of 594 units for the month of May, down 11.5 percent.

For the year-to-date the Fiat Group has now just edged over the half million sales mark (506,622) but is 46,000 units and 7.3 percent down year-on-year. Amongst the big six carmakers represented in the region, only GM (-8.0 percent) has fared worse than the Fiat Group while the much smaller Toyota (-10.9 percent) is also sharply negative after the first five months of the year. All the other big manufacturing groups are still in positive territory despite the recent sales slowdown, with VW (+0.5 percent) Europe's customary market leader, followed by PSA Peugeot-Citroën (+10.3 percent), Renault (+25.2) and Ford (+2.2 percent).

The Fiat Automobiles brand has 409,190 sales for the year-to-date and is down 8.3 percent, Lancia is comfortably the best FGA performer in year-on-year terms, and with 51,754 sales for the year-to-date, it is still positive (+4.5 percent), while Alfa Romeo's 42,581 registrations so far this year is down 10.8 percent on the opening five months of last year. Ferrari and Maserati have 3,097 sales for the year-to-date combined which is virtually unchanged year-on-year (-1.3 percent).

The Chrysler Group, in which the Fiat Group owns an initial 20 percent stake, continued its usual European sales decline during May and for the month it was down 19.2 percent to just 3,550 units combined across its three brands, Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep, which gave it a 0.3 percent share of all European sales. With the Chrysler brand soon to be removed from all the European markets except the UK and Ireland and Dodge's own offerings being whittled down to importing just a handful of its muscle cars, the U.S. carmaker's focus in Europe in the near future will be firmly on the off-road Jeep brand. For the year-to-date the Chrysler Group has collected 18,214 registrations across the EU, down just over 4,000 units (-19.2 percent) year-on-year.