The Fiat brand's sales
suffered again during June thanks to continuing falls on
the key Italian and German markets and only the
B-segment Punto made it into the European top-ten best
sellers for the month, albeit down in ninth place, while
the Panda vanished from sight once again.
European new passenger
car sales continued
to fall during June (down 6.5 percent versus June 2009),
dragging down the overall year-to-date figure to just 1.1 percent
above the same period last year, according to data
released by JATO Dynamics. The continued weakness in
German and Italian new car markets (down 32.3 percent
and 19.1 percent respectively) is the main contributory
factor to lower sales volumes, and their declines hit
Fiat (79,582 units last month) hard in particular: it only managed
to place itself as Europe's seventh best-selling brand, six
thousand units behind Citroen (85,459) and twenty
thousand units adrift of Peugeot (99,944), both of which
performed strongly on their domestic market.
Ford (102,761) and
Volkswagen (152,801), the fourth and first best sellers
respectively during June, like Fiat are also brands
that traditionally sell well to German and Italian
buyers, and so they suffered last month as well.
In France and UK, by contrast, things looked better
during June: sales figures were in the black (up 2.3 percent and 10.8
percent, respectively), helping certain brands whose
sales are based on these markets, to show more positive
sales figures: Renault (118,891) was the second best
selling brand across Europe last month while GM Europe's Opel/Vauxhall (113,360)
was next up, just over five thousand units adrift.
Behind Fiat, the European top-ten selling brands was wrapped up by BMW, Mercedes
and Audi.
The Panda slipped out
of the European top-ten last month once again as the ending of eco-incentive
schemes squeezed A-segment sales while the Punto
(including Grande Punto, Punto EVO and Punto Classic
combined) scraped into the top-ten albeit down in ninth place
for June with 24,262 registrations. Almost exactly half
its volumes came from Italy. This figure was down a
quarter (-25.5 percent) year-on-year (32,566 sales in
June 2009). For the year-to-date the Punto has 151,338
sales in Europe, down twenty thousand units and 11.5
percent on the same period last year (171,078 units for
January-June 2009) but is the still fifth best-selling car in
Europe over the period thanks to strong first quarter
sales.
Europe's best selling
car, the VW Golf, added 46,235 sales last month and
comfortably retained its top spot although its sales, like the
Punto, were down by a quarter. Opel/Vauxhall turned in a
strong performance which was down to two key models –
the Corsa (37,984) and Astra (33,927) – the latter of which
was recently relaunched. Both were particularly popular
in the UK during June (sales up 22.2 percent and 85.9
percent, respectively) and consequently took second and
fourth place overall in sales across Europe. Sandwiched between them
in third place was the other big model recently relaunched, the Volkswagen Polo (36,721), and its overall
June 2010 sales were up 72.3 percent, freshness
affording it far greater popularity than its predecessor
attracted in the same period in 2009. Six hundred units
back in fifth place was the Renault Clio, while between
the Clio and the Punto came the Ford Fiesta, Peugeot 207
and Renault Mégane.
