Lancia however bucked FGA's downward German market trend last month, the Turinese brand was up 1.3 percent year-on-year which beat the slightly negative overall market, although that performance was off the back of sales of just 236 cars. Lancia also took a 0.1 percent share of the German market for the month just gone.

Chrysler Group's sales in Germany accounted for 688 units during July, and although this data isn't broken down by brand, it would be almost or entirely attributable to the Jeep brand, and that represented a 55.3 percent year-on-year increase.

For the year-to-date 1,882,261 new cars have been sold in Germany, that performance flat on last year (-0.1 percent). The Fiat brand has 46,686 sales for the year so far, down 10.6 percent on the same seven month period last year and making it the sixth worst performing brand this year in Germany. Fiat has a 2.5 percent share of the market for the year-to-date.

In fact the second worst performing brand in Germany, or the worst if Daihatsu (which is being withdrawn from this market) is eliminated from the data, is Alfa Romeo, down 27.0 percent on the same period last year. That gives it a 0.3 percent share of sales.

Lancia by contrast is the Germany's best performing brand so far this year in year-on-year terms albeit off the back of a total sales volume of 2,152 units. The second best performing brand for the year-to-date is Land Rover which is up 86.7 percent. Finally Chrysler Group is up 42.9 percent year-on-year off the back of 4,266 sales which will almost all be drawn from the Jeep brand.