That gave the sports brand a 0.3 percent German market share for the final month of the year. It also left Alfa Romeo as the fourth worst performing auto brand on the market for the month after Subaru (-75.1 percent), Lada (-43.1 percent), the surviving rump of the three Chrysler Group brands (-41.2 percent) and Mitsubishi (-30.1 percent).

Lancia however saw continued upward traction during December, although it is coming off a nominal base. However 431 registrations was up by 171.1 percent year-on-year and made it the best performing brand for the month in these terms and well ahead of the second best performance which came from Land Rover, which was up 68.1 percent off the back of 780 sales. Lancia took a 0.2 percent share of the German market for December.

For the full year of 2011 a total of 3,173,634 new passenger cars have been sold in Germany, that is up 8.8 percent year-on-year. The Fiat brand has managed to hold its sales steady during 2011 after its terrible 2010 (when its sales more than halved over 2009) although it couldn't manage the average of the overall market and ended 2011 up 2.5 percent. That equated to 80,125 sales and gave Fiat a 2.5 percent share of the market for the whole of last year.

Alfa Romeo nudged its way into five figure sales for the year during the month of December and finished 2012 with 10,480 units shifted and a 0.3 percent market share. That performance was up 21.6 percent on 2010 and despite a late year drop in sales made it the equal third best performer in year-on-year terms behind Lancia (+60.2 percent) and Volvo (31.4 percent) and equal with Chevrolet which was also up 21.6 percent on its 2010 performance.

Lancia was the best year-on-year performer on the German market during 2011 although that was off only 2,344 sales meaning the brand has a lot of work to do. However the arrival of the new Ypsilon has given Lancia some much needed traction and finally reversed its almost complete decline.