Despite reportedly heavy
August discounting of its key models, Fiat wasn't able
to ride with the German market's 18.3 percent bounce
last month, the Turinese brand was up just 4.1 percent,
while Alfa Romeo's year-long positive run ended with a
10 percent drop in sales.
In total 237,561 new cars were sold in Germany last
month, a healthy jump of almost one-fifth on the same
period last year. The Fiat Automobiles brand accounted
for just 5,870 of these registrations which gave it a
2.5 percent market share for August, but that only added
up to a rise of 4.1 percent year-on-year that lagged the
overall August bounce. It meant that the carmaker didn't
pull any August ground back as in the same month last
year Fiat's sales in Germany had nosedived by 44.8
percent versus August 2009.
Although Fiat has a
reputation in Germany (as elsewhere) of heavily
discounting its products, Bloomberg today quoted
rebate research from the University of Duisburg-Essen as
stating that Fiat had offered discounts of 35 percent on
the Panda and 31 percent on the Punto during August in
Germany.
Alfa Romeo, which had seen the Giulietta help it reverse
a long decline on a market where it was once a well
respected niche brand, finally went back to it's losing
ways last month after an almost year long positive run;
the 'sports' brand was down 10 percent year-on-year
after selling 722 cars in August. That gave Alfa Romeo a
0.3 percent market share for the month just gone.
Lancia, which has long since faded in Germany, showed
some flickerings of life from the corpse last month, and
although that added up to just 157 registrations it was
however up a pleasing 33.1 percent year-on-year. Finally
Chrysler Group sold 434 cars last month in Germany, and
although the U.S. carmaker's individual brand
performances aren't broken down that tally will now be
mostly made up of Jeep division products. That result
was flat on the same month last year when the Dodge and
Chrysler brands were still adding to the total.
For the year-to-date 2,121,047 new cars have now been
sold in Germany, a rise of 11.2 percent on the same
period last year. The Fiat brand is on 58,077
registrations after the first eight months of the year,
up 4.0 percent on the same period last year, to give it
a 2.7 percent share of all sales in 2011.
Alfa Romeo is on 7,701 sales for the year-to-date in
Germany, up by almost exactly a half on the same period
last year (+50.1 percent) for a 0.4 percent share of all
sales for far this year. Despite its August slump, Alfa
Romeo is still the best performing carmaker - large or
small - on the German market for the year-to-date, ahead
of Volvo (+47.6 percent), Mitsubishi (+45.0 percent) and
Chevrolet (+41.4 percent).
Lancia meanwhile is on 1,143 registrations for the
year-to-date, which puts it up 11.2 percent on the same
period last year, a relatively positive position to be
in with an array of new additions to its range all set
to hit the German showrooms before the end of the year.
Lancia has taken a 0.1 percent share of all German new
car market sales for the year-to-date. Finally, Chrysler
Group is on 3,419 sales combined across its brands for
the year-to-date, down a fifth on the same period last
year.
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