Europe In October 2010: Hangover

by Bertel Schmitt

Published: November 16th, 2010

New car registrations in the 27 countries of the EU crashed by 16.6 percent to 1,027,036 units in October. That according to the latest statistics of the European manufacturer organization ACEA. The year looks a bit better: In the first 10 months, demand for new cars has decreased by 5.5 percent, totaling 11,279,542 new vehicles registered.

Europe is in the throes of a big cash for clunker induced hangover. It will take a lot of Aspirin, and into 2011 to get over it. Even compared with October 2008, the market in the EU27 is down 9.4 percent. Compared with the first ten months of 2008, sales are down 12 percent.

Any way you look at it: It’s down.

Double digit contractions are being reported from all major markets in Europe, ranging from -18.5 percent in France, to -20.0 percent in Germany, -22.2 percent in the UK, -28.8 percent in Italy and -37.6 percent in Spain.

Two markets registered triple digit gains: Ireland’s new car sales rose 114.6 percent (from 1,530 last year to 3,284 this time around.) Estonia’s car market exploded by 121.2 percent. They sold 993 cars this October, compared to 449 in October last year.

If you look at the data ( here in PDF and here as Excel,) you will see the markets that didn’t receive steroid injections last year slowly recover. You also see the drug recipients exhibiting serious withdrawal symptoms.

On the manufacturer front, not much to report. VW remains the emperor of Europe with a more or less unchanged market share of 21.3 percent for the year. Next is PSA, up half a percent to 13.5 percent. Renault keeps gaining market share, up to 10.3 from 9.1 in the first ten months. GM is holding its own (8.6 percent compared to 9.1, but Saab is gone). Fiat loses a good percent of share to 7.8. And so on. The field hasn’t changed dramatically. If you look at all the Octobers for the last years, matters appear less dramatic than they may sound.

What has changed is not on the list: The makers with heavy exports to China, notably the Germans, are doing much better than the numbers make you believe.

#BertelSchmitt #Europe #NewVehicleSales #October2010 #Sales

Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

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Kjhkjlhkjhkljh kljhjkhjklhkjh A prelude is a bad idea. There is already Acura with all the weird sport trims. This will not make back it's R&D money.
Analoggrotto I don't see a red car here, how blazing stupid are you people?
Redapple2 Love the wheels
Redapple2 Good luck to them. They used to make great cars. 510. 240Z, Sentra SE-R. Maxima. Frontier.
Joe65688619 Under Ghosn they went through the same short-term bottom-line thinking that GM did in the 80s/90s, and they have not recovered say, to their heyday in the 50s and 60s in terms of market share and innovation. Poor design decisions (a CVT in their front-wheel drive "4-Door Sports Car", model overlap in a poorly performing segment (they never needed the Altima AND the Maxima...what they needed was one vehicle with different drivetrain, including hybrid, to compete with the Accord/Camry, and decontenting their vehicles: My 2012 QX56 (I know, not a Nissan, but the same holds for the Armada) had power rear windows in the cargo area that could vent, a glass hatch on the back door that could be opened separate from the whole liftgate (in such a tall vehicle, kinda essential if you have it in a garage and want to load the trunk without having to open the garage door to make room for the lift gate), a nice driver's side folding armrest, and a few other quality-of-life details absent from my 2018 QX80. In a competitive market this attention to detai is can be the differentiator that sell cars. Now they are caught in the middle of the market, competing more with Hyundai and Kia and selling discounted vehicles near the same price points, but losing money on them. They invested also invested a lot in niche platforms. The Leaf was one of the first full EVs, but never really evolved. They misjudged the market - luxury EVs are selling, small budget models not so much. Variable compression engines offering little in terms of real-world power or tech, let a lot of complexity that is leading to higher failure rates. Aside from the Z and GT-R (low volume models), not much forced induction (whether your a fan or not, look at what Honda did with the CR-V and Acura RDX - same chassis, slap a turbo on it, make it nicer inside, and now you can sell it as a semi-premium brand with higher markup). That said, I do believe they retain the technical and engineering capability to do far better. About time management realized they need to make smarter investments and understand their markets better.