Europe In April 2011: New Car Sales Down 4.1 Percent
If you are looking for a growth market for cars, don’t look to Europe. In terms of car sales, the Old Country is going sideways with a negative bias. In April, sales of new cars in the EU was down 4.1 percent on the year. New registrations amounted to 1,089,118 units. For the first four months of 2011, registrations totaled 4,674,457 units, or 2.7 percent less than over the same period a year earlier. This according to data released by the European Auto Manufacturers Association ACEA.
With the exception of Germany (+2.6 percent), demand was down in all European volume markets in April. From January to April, growth prevailed in two thirds of the markets but the downturn recorded in the UK (8.5 percent), Italy (-19.0 percent) and Spain (-26.3 percent) resulted in a 2.7 percent decline in the EU demand. In comparison, Germany looks downright healthy with 10.7 percent growth in the first four months of the yea r.
January – April %Share UnitsRankUnitsRank% Chg ’11’10’11’11’10’1011/10ALL BRANDS 4,674,457 4,805,297 -2.7VW Group22.420.81,047,8251997,6631+5.0PSA Group13.113.9611,9142668,6762-8.5RENAULT Group9.910.5462,3273505,4543-8.5GM Group8.68.2402,6154394,5776+2.0FORD8.18.9377,3405427,7504-11.8FIAT Group7.38.5340,9526409,2625-16.7BMW Group5.44.8254,5227230,8437+10.3DAIMLER4.54.3209,9888205,6839+2.1TOYOTA Group4.44.4204,4709211,1698-3.2NISSAN3.52.8161,71010135,01310+19.8HYUNDAI2.82.6132,46411125,41811+5.6KIA1.81.985,8261290,94312-5.6VOLVO CAR CORP.1.81.683,6181375,73613+10.4SUZUKI1.41.463,9981469,29114-7.6HONDA1.21.456,3631567,72515-16.8MAZDA1.11.452,1051665,63716-20.6OTHER0.91.043,4901747,34417-8.1MITSUBISHI0.90.640,0321829,15919+37.3JAGUAR LAND ROVER0.70.733,6691934,09118-1.2CHRYSLER0.20.39,2292013,86320-33.4Not much change in the manufacturer ranking. Based on first four months of data, Volkswagen remains the king of the hill. Volkswagen added 1.7 percent to its unassailable market share. GM climbed from rank 6 to rank 4 by adding 0.4 percent of share. Ford dropped from #4 to #5. Fiat lost a whopping 1.2 percent of share and dropped to place 6 from 5.
For further analysis, all data can be downloaded as PDF and Excel.
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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Everywhere Ford goes it is outsold by GM. That's gotta suck.
Opel is having the discount the living cr@p out of it's products to move the metal in order to survive, ford stopped playing that game awhile ago, as BMW, Porsche, etc. have proved market share doesn't matter, but Net Income sure does, that was AM's first directive.