Best Selling Cars Around The Globe: World Roundup July 2012: Geely CK, Peugeot 208 and Subaru XV Under The Spotlight

After sharing with you the Top 150 best-selling cars in the world last week, it is time for our acclaimed monthly rendezvous: the World Roundup! This is already the 5th World Roundup, it’s amazing how time flies, isn’t it?

If last month the focus was on the Focus (ha) in China and the Santa Fe in South Korea, in July most of the highlights happened in Europe…

You can check out previous world Roundups here for March 2012 (“Has the Hybrid era started for good?”), here for April 2012 (“Big change coming from India”) and here for May 2012 (“GM and Toyota Etios make headlines”).

Enough of the world and you just want to know which cars sell best in your own backyard? Easy. You can visit 168 countries and territories in my blog, one by one, in the comfort of your own lounge. Travelling the world doesnt get any cheaper than that!

Back to our Roundup.

So as I said this month Europe is the theatre of most significant events in the car world.

First and this will remain a very important milestone for the car industry as a whole, a Chinese model manages to rank #1 in an export market officially for the very first time: it is the Geely CK and it happened in Ukraine. I say officially because there may be other countries where this happened (I’m thinking of Tajikistan, Myanmar, North Korea and some small South American countries like Cuba, Uruguay or Paraguay) but no official models data is available for these countries.

The second big event in July in Europe is the first place of the Peugeot 208 at home in France in spite of difficult conditions for Peugeot with 7,115 sales and 4.8 percent market share just as the 4th generation of its archenemy the Renault Clio was unveiled. The 208 also breaks into the European Top 10 for the first time in July at #5.

For the third model under the spotlight this month we have a brand that hasn’t really made itself noticed lately: Subaru, with its new XV clearly hitting the mark in Europe, albeit in very small markets: it is up to a record #9 in Norway with 263 sales and 2.2 percent share and to an even better 4th spot in Switzerland, the world’s most fragmented market, with 418 units and 1.7 percent share. These are by far the best rankings the XV has achieved so far anywhere in the world.

3 years after its facelift and as the new generation is scheduled to arrive within the next 12 months, the Nissan Qashqai just doesn’t stop impressing and continues to improve on already fantastic sales performances, #1 in Spain for the third time ever in what ended up being the worst July on record there, #1 in Finland for only the second time ever, up to a best-ever #14 in France and to a record 6th place in Europe, possibly the highest ever ranking of any Japanese model in the region…

Without making a lot of noise, Toyota has launched the 11th generation of the world best-seller Corolla locally a couple of months ago, and sales figures now reflect the change: the Corolla is up 4 spots on June and 114 percent year-on-year to #4 with 13,404 sales in Japan. This is the Corolla’s highest monthly volume in the country since March 2010 when it sold 14,416 units and its 2nd highest in the last 4 years (it sold 14,546 in July 2008).

The Renault/Dacia Duster confirms its hit status in emerging markets with a great first month of sales in India at 1,194 sales. The French-Romanian SUV has received over 12,000 bookings so far in the sub-continent and thanks to its arrival, Renault sold as many cars in India in July alone as it did in the previous 3 months combined… The Duster also progresses in Russia at an estimated #11 with 5,000 sales, ranks #9 in Argentina where the Sandero is #2, and #7 in France, its best score since last November.

Renault also welcomes good news from Ireland where the Fluence is #1 for the 2nd time ever, from Slovenia where the Scenic leads the way for the first time and from its native France where the Dacia Lodgy breaks into the Top 20 for the first time at a promising

It’s an excellent month for Mercedes: the C-Class hits its highest ever ranking in the UK by far at with its previous best being #10 in December 2005 and November 2011, while the B-Class reaches its best ever position and market share in Germany at #5 with 2.3 percent share, with its previous bests being #6 last May and 2.2 percent in August 2006… This in addition to the news that over 40,000 orders for the new gen A-Class have been received, prompting Merceded to hire Finnish assembler Valmet to help keep up with demand.

It wouldn’t be a true World Roundup without a quick update on the 2 biggest car markets in the world: China and the USA. So here goes: