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Alfa Romeo, driven by interest in the new
Giulietta, performed strongly last month in
Germany, up 67.1 percent year-on-year,
albeit on just 827 units and versus a
January 2010 when German consumers had
shunned it's showrooms. |
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Following its deep slump
last year the German new car market enjoyed a second
consecutive positive month in January, up 16.5 percent
year-on-year and that helped Fiat trim its losses (-6.8
percent) while Alfa Romeo surged forward (+67.1
percent). During December the German market finally
returned to positive ways, up 6.9 percent year-on-year
(although it was down by more than a fifth for the full
year), and last month's rise built on that performance.
In total 211,056 new cars were sold across Germany
during January as the market continues to claw back
2010's losses. The Fiat brand, while significantly
underperforming the market, was able to stem a torrid
period that has seen it's sales collapsing by more than
a half month after month and its 4,918 units in January
was only marginally adrift of the same month last year
(-6.8 percent). That gave the brand a 2.3 percent share
of the market for the opening month of the year.
Alfa Romeo however, driven by interest in the new
Giulietta, performed strongly last month, up 67.1
percent year-on-year, albeit on just 827 units and
versus a January 2010 when German consumers had shunned
it's showrooms. This performance however pointed the
brand in the right direction and builds on the new
C-segment Giulietta's positive reception in this market
ever since it's launch last summer and gave the brand,
currently being eyed up by Germany's dominant national
carmaker VW, a useful 0.4 percent share of the market.
The other big year-on-year winners in Germany last month
included Volvo (+105.6 percent) Mitsubishi (+105.0
percent), Subaru (+63.5 percent), Mazda (+61.1 percent),
Porsche (+47.1 percent), Jaguar (+38.7 percent), Hyundai
(+37.1 percent) and SEAT (+34.9 percent).
Lancia however has almost exited the German market and
it managed just 77 sales in January, and, demonstrating
how deep the upscale brand's rot is, that was only 27.4
percent down on the same month a year ago. For Lancia's
embattled German dealers the arrival of the new
next-generation Ypsilon in a few months time cannot come
soon enough to galvanize a mostly-aging product line up.
The other big losers in Germany last month were mostly
niche brands and included Daihatsu (-65.9 percent),
Chevrolet (-30.8 percent), Nissan (-20.5 percent), Kia
(-19.9 percent) and Peugeot (-13.1 percent).
Elsewhere the Chrysler Group, now 30 percent owned by
Fiat, had a flat month year-on-year, it's 347 sales
combined across it's three brands - Chrysler, Dodge and
Jeep - was up 1.5 percent on January 2010, and gave the
U.S. Carmaker a 0.2 percent share of the market.
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