German car sales thread

...due to €2,500 bounty on scrapping old ones.

All the big winners are small imports benefiting from German taxpayer euros.

e.g. Hyundai i30, 4,399 sold in February 2009 (+810% over February 2008), Škodia Fabia (9,190, +168%) Suzuki Swift (3,263, +328%), Mitsubishi Colt (2,924, +268%).

Even the VW Polo (8,889, +52%) has been produced as an end-of-run special of IIRC 40,000 units - in Spain.

Where is the Fiesta made? The Ka has done well, new models are Polish...

A similar thing is happening in China due to the small engine tax reductions:

The government cut the sales tax on sub 1.6L cars, and as a consequence saw sub 1.6l car sales blossom by an amazing 18.78% in January and February

patpending wrote:Where is the Fiesta made? The Ka has done well, new models are Polish...

Spain, I think...

How many € does a Hyundai i30 cost?

Presumably few enough that with 2,500 to start with, you don't need any credit for a purchase

Windy wrote:How many € does a Hyundai i30 cost?

Presumably few enough that with 2,500 to start with, you don't need any credit for a purchase

the cheapest is €15,140... http://www.hyundai.de/pages/index.html

and the guarantee is "only" three years http://www.hyundai.de/pages/kundenservice/garantie/index.html

...someone's back pocket is full of euros!

March sales: Hyundai still doing marvellously (now with the i10). Years ago, Renault overtook FIAT at about position no.8. Now FIAT have achieved il sorpasso and have vroomed up to position 3!

Highlights from the April figures: Hyundai i10, Toyota Aygo, Fiat Panda and Ford Fiesta among the big winners. Dacia overtakes Citroën and Fiat overtakes former Top 3 manufacturer Mercedes to take fourth place. (no Merc in the Top 10).

Land-Rover down 40% year on year and Jaguar down 33%.

In May, Dacia overtook Renault to take 10th place with 3.5% of the German market...

...and it doesn't seem that long ago that Renault overtook FIAT to about 6th place...

...now FIAT is 8th.

The whole market is up nearly 40% over last year... it can't last, surely...

patpending wrote:The whole market is up nearly 40% over last year... it can't last, surely...

You're right, it can't last. And I bet the hangover will hurt.

In June the clear winner is the Ford Fiesta, whose sales are up more than one-and-a-half times to nearly 60,000 in the first half - or around 3% which would mean that if "Ford Fiesta" was a manufacturer it would outsell Citroën all by itself and be at no.11 behind Toyota...

Strangely enough, in the top 50, the only cars showing a fall in sales worse than 20% are:

• Mercedes C-class
  
• B*W 5-series
  
• Audi A6
  
• VW Multivan
  
• Ford Mondeo
  

...suggesting that the larger cars (first three surely German-made?) are not benefitting from scrappage...

...but the whole market is up 20% year on year* and 40% June 09 over June 08! Now that's what I call unsustainable...

* I must have got sometthing wrong when I said the market was up 40% year-on-year last month. Sales were great in June so if it's 20% year-on-year I was wrong...

July, and the Ford Fiesta is now up 165% to third place, only a couple of hundred cars behind the Astra, which itself is selling 36% more than last year.

The Fiat Panda is up 361% to 18th place, while Dacia is the big winner among the brands , sales up 310% to 13th place (ahead of Hyundai (up 125% to 15th) and Kia (up 77% to 18th).

The smart is down this month over June and only 3% up year on year - apparently a quarter of all smarts are company cars.

The market is up over 25%. There's a huge post-party hangover on the way...

And it's August and the German carbuying public have spent five billion euros of Government money, the scrappage money is all gone.

However, cars ordered under the scheme are still being registered.

The Golf/Jetta has a massive 10% of the 2009 market and its YTD sales are up 47% on last year. Apparently with scrappage and discounts, you could get one for around €10k...

Another big seller with an even larger jump (up three times as much as the Golf in percentage terms!) is the Ford Fiesta, sales up 149% which now alone outsells Hyundai (still) and has some 2.7% of the market.

Just glancing at the models with massive year-on-year percentage growth over 200%, these include Dacia Sandero (+1627%), Fiat Panda (+335%), Ford Ka (+656%), Hyundai i30 (+220%) and Hyundai i10 (+678%).

Overall, the big winners seem to be Fiat, Dacia, and Hyundai (but not so much Kia). Lada is doing well from a tiny base, 3,581 cars YTD instead of some 2,000.

Good news for the Poles!

Big winners on the German market in the year to September (and it's up over 20%!) are Hyundai and Dacia. Lada may be up 140%, but that's still only just under 4,000 cars in the year (which is still more than Land-Rover).

auto, motor + sport points out that the Hyundai i30, with 22,939 sold to date, has sold 235% more year-on-year (2,924 - 400% more in September 09 than September 08!) and has made a big contribution to Hyundai's 117% year-on-year increase.

Just the i30 (a car I'm not sure I have ever seen!) now outsells all Volvos put together!

Curiously enough, sales of Kias are only 18% up and so lag the market...

Interestingly enough, comparing sales for November 06 (which I have just found and include 14 MG Rovers!) with September 09, Ford are stronger, Opel are weaker, but beat Mercedes to no.2 because Merc sales are down by a third (9 months against 11)!

Other climbers are Škoda - up to 5th from 9th - FIAT, whose sales have doubled since 06 taking them to 9th from 12th, and Dacia up from 5,566 cars sold in 11 months to 65,633 in only nine!

patpending wrote:Just the i30 (a car I'm not sure I have ever seen!) now outsells all Volvos put together!

I saw one a little while ago, couldn't see any reason why you would choose it other than price. Not sure I would notice if I passed another, very boring!

How come they are allowed Ladas, I thought they were banned from Europe for emissions reasons...

Windy wrote:How come they are allowed Ladas, I thought they were banned from Europe for emissions reasons...

I did read an article about a taxi driver somewhere like Cologne who swore by Ladas and everyone else just pointed.

This is a Lada 1117 Kalina:



http://www.pkws.de/fahrberichte/fahrbericht-lada-kalina-1117-deutschlands-guenstigster-kombi.html

the name suggests it is made in Russian East Prussia in the ex-Königsberg enclave...


PS If that is true the Lada is made in Europe for Europeans, e.g. Russians!

In October, still up an unsustainable 25%.

The Corsa and the Fabia are up 139% and 212% respectively to 2nd and 3rd places.

Other big winners: Dacia (Sandero outsells Logan 4,000 (+160%) to 2,000(+22%)), Ford Fiesta (+256%. 4th), FIAT Panda (+261%), Renault Megane (+254%), Nissan Micra (+341%), Ford Ka (+2,154% - new model?), Skoda Roomster (+186%), Renault Scenic (+113%), Audi Q5 (+1,113% - new model) and Hyundai i30 (+138% but only to 1,730 / 49th).

Surprisingly, the FIAT 500 isn't really going anywhere. Nos 43, 44 and 45: 500, Aygo, C1...

I just mentioned the Micra. The MINI is only in 32nd place (+34%), Land-Rovers are down 39% and Jaguars are down 20%. British star: Morgan, up 400% to a massive 10 sales!

Audi's A4 and A6 slip big time. Mercedes, Audi and B*W in places 4, 5 and 6 see sales down 12%, 15% and 18% respectively - in a rising market!

So much for the benefit even to a major car manufacturing country of scrappage. I think only one of the above cars (the Fiesta) is actually made in Germany!

(exception - Audi Q5 - I think its huge increase is because it's a new model)

November and the runaway train is still hurtling down the track though new scrappage money has run out - sales up 19.7% on November 08.

November's big winner is British-made! the Micra's sales are five times what they were in 08 making it sixth-best-selling small car at no.22 behind Polo (2), Corsa (3), Fiesta (7), Clio (18) and Panda (19). (the FIAT 500 is only at no.43...) (Nissan Note and Renault Idea not in top 50)

Apparently Nissan is offering €3,000 minimum on trade-ins...but if you buy the car in euros, Nissan are laughing because the production costs are denominated in buttons...a.k.a. sterling...

Company car sales are now 44% of the market (May 09: 30%, Nov 08: 61%)

And despite my gut feeling that scrappage was going to be a field day for Kia, VW continues to increase its domination in a rising market with a massive 23.0% (was 19.8%) of the market (plus Audi 8.1%, Škoda 3.9%) and the 33.8% year-on-year sales increase for the VW brand alone represents nearly 200,000 extra cars sold in the year (or approximately B*W's entire sales for the year!)

Year on year so far, Mercedes is is down 14.8%, B*W is down 11.7% and Audi down 4.9%.

The big winners in percentage terms are "full-size value merchants whose brand's Eastern promise is European" rather than "purveyors of titchy eco-boxes" - Dacia (up 238.1% or 55,000 cars) and Lada (tiny numbers up 117.3% or 2,400 cars (compare that with VW!) to a position ahead of Jeep and Jaguar!)

Now we have the full-year figures we can see the effect of "scrappage" (a word that did not exist in English at the beginning of the year).

Full-year sales were up an unsustainable 23%, though December month sales were down 4% against December 2008.

Arguably the big winner was the Volkswagen Golf (and Jetta saloon)!

the 58% sales increase (134,000 more cars) means it now has 9.4% of the market all by itself, more than any brand except Volkswagen itself.

The other big winner manufacturers were Dacia (up 231% to 14th) and Lada (up 105% to 31st, just behind Land-Rover).

So in fact scrappage ended up benefitting not the small cars, but rather the German Ford Cortina and two "Honest Sergei Deutschmarkstretchers"...

...Added on 24/1:

Looking again at this, purely December's figures show the Nissan Micra up 396% - must be a promotion. (Fiat Panda, Dacia Sandero and Ford Ka also show massive sales booms month 09 v 08). Also, company car sales are right down in 2009 to 37% overall, down to 30.5% in May but 50.4% in December.

2009 sees diesel car sales down to "only" 30.7% (2008 - 44.1%).

What was it Ian Curtis said?

"Procession moves on, the party is over"?

Now scrappage is gone and the German market is down 4.3% year on year in January.

The Golf (10% of the entire market by itself) is still showing a surely-unsustainable 30.9% increase!

Opel sold 20 fewer cars than Audi in the month to take fourth place. I would expect to see Opel in third for February.

The Nissan Micra contimues its blitzkrieg on the results - 8th most popular car ahead of the Mercedes C Class and the VW Passat, up 440%! (apparently there is a manufacturer bonus of up to €3,000 available). This brings Nissan up 205% to 10th place behind Peugeot but ahead of Citroën...

More info from the ADAC.

through scrappage, Škoda sold 94,352 cars but only 9,410 were scrapped making them the "winners" in terms of numbers of cars on the road ahead of Dacia (48,551 sold, none scrapped).

At the other end of the scale, Opel sold 147,131 but 251,884 were scrapped.

Colours of new registrations in Germany 2009:

1,238,013 Grey/Silver
1,050,188 Black
519,470 Blue
373,135 White
347,928 Red
82,136 Yellow
67,105 Brown (my comment - !)
62.360 Green
26,852 Orange
10,890 Purple/Violet
29,098 Other

re: brown cars, I can't say I've seen a single one on the roads here today. "Brown cars" are linked inextricably with "Life on Mars".



I would have thought British new cars go:

Silver/grey
Blue
Black?
Red
White (up and coming)

Green has fallen out of favour but is now used for turbo nuttermobiles.

"Orange" means "Ford Focus" it's so unusual...only 50ish TFs won't change that before the MG6...

Overall sales plummet 29.8%.

Nearly every manufacturer has lost sales against last year, Škoda is down 33.7% and Hyundai and Kia have sold fewer than half as many cars.

B*W is up 9.4% (the X1 effect) and Nissan is up 45.4% to 12th place, just behind FIAT (Micra promotion - top British-made car sells 1,976, more than double, to overtake the Insignia and the 5-series...)

Total monthly sales down 26% over last year.

The Nissan Micra plummets out of the top 50 and Nissan is down to 16th.

Other fallers - Fiat Panda down 69% from 4th to 31st, and Škoda Fabia down 49% from 3rd to 5th, Dacia is down 43%...

Do you think this drop is due to the ending of their scrappage scheme?

ZTsteve wrote:Do you think this drop is due to the ending of their scrappage scheme?

yes, that's what the magazine says, and the Dacias, Fiats and Škodas are the cars that have really benefitted from scrappage while Germany's traditional big sellers like the Mercedes E Class are now bouncing back relatively.

The Micra was a Nissan promotion. I had said it was top British car: apparently they are now made in Thailand.

Scrappage has no net environmental benefit anyway, and I expect that we too will find we have wasted big money cubing perfectly good cars in favour of imports only to discover that sales have been cannibalised from later years,

The German market continues its slide into post-scrappage hangover, down 31% year on year to 259,000.

Big falls from the scrappage marques (Dacia down 76% to 21st, Škoda down 50% to 9th (worse without the Superb, Fabia and Octavia both lose over half) but, as fleet sales come back, B*W is up 10% to 3rd (overtaking Audi for April 09?) (5 series up 60% to no.17, X1 straight in at no.32) (X3, X5 not in top 50) and Mercedes is up 4% at 2nd (E-class up 23% to no.6, C-class up 15% to no,7)

The Fiesta is down 58% from 4th to 9th, the Scenic has sold neatly three times as many as in 09 to reach no.30 (incentives) .

Clearly there are a lot of cars that have plummeted out of the top 50 so that the Škoda Superb's doubling of sales to 1,332 takes it to no,47...

The post-scrappage hangover gets worse - most manufacturer sales are down (total market down 35.1% year on year to 249,708) but the scrappage specialists Dacia lead the vulture crashdive, down 77.7% - the Sandero, no. 8 in May 09, was no.44 (sales down 82.6%) in 2010,

On the up, 43.8% from 25 to 3, is the new Merc E-class as companies restock their fleets (62% of sales to companies). Both Jaguar and Land-Rover increased sales, but only to 299 and 481 respectively (though up a very creditable 26.2%/42.3%) so that the total for all JLR sales is still only just over half Porsche...

Scenic incentives clearly still apply (sales up 7 times) and the Superb is up 165% so I imagine that's discounted too...

patpending wrote:the scrappage specialists Dacia lead the vulture crashdive, down 77.7% - the Sandero, no. 8 in May 09, was no.44 (sales down 82.6%) in 2010,

Maybe by next month those figures will be on the same scale as SAICs increases in China - in tripple figure percentages

Windy wrote:

patpending wrote:the scrappage specialists Dacia lead the vulture crashdive, down 77.7% - the Sandero, no. 8 in May 09, was no.44 (sales down 82.6%) in 2010,

Maybe by next month those figures will be on the same scale as SAICs increases in China - in tripple figure percentages

yep, to get a triple-figure reduction they have to be pushing the cars back into the factories!

Total market down 32%. Yaris falls 56% (all small cars 42%) but Merc E-class up 22% and B*W 5-series up 15%. Sales of the Golf and Jetta (counted as one model) plummet 50% to just under 22,000, meaning the Golf only outsells the next model (the Polo) by 2 to1 and only 1 car in 5 sold is a Golf.

Promotions remain a key sales technique, e.g. Nissan Micra up 16%, Renault Scenic up 97%, Hyundai i30 up 66%...