Photo credit: Emilio Labrador
The sales of new cars in Europe keep on falling it seems. The good news (of sorts) is that the fall in June was less than the fall in previous months. Celebrating a smaller fall seems a bit like throwing a party because I failed my exams by less than I had expected to but, hey, don’t let me put a dampener on things.
So how did the rest of the continent shape up? Well only those German new car buying fans have managed to lift their country’s sales up to a better figure than the Brits. The whole of Europe is down but the decline does seem to be slowing somewhat. Now where did I put those balloons and party poppers?
The Winners and the Losers
The top brands are Audi, BMW and Volkswagen and in fact these are the only ones of the ten main brands who managed to sell more vehicles in June 2012 than in June 2011. The VW Golf stayed firm at the top of the rankings with almost 40,000 sales, compared to just over 40,000 12 months ago. The biggest losers were Fiat and Ford, with both seeing sales drop by around 18%.
Of the brands which are outside the top 10 we saw increases for Toyota, Skoda, Hyundai, Kia and Nissan.
It is clear that a lot of new cars are still being sold across the continent but it remains to be seen when (if?) the sales figures get back to where they were a few years ago. It is unlikely that many more people will want to shell out on such an expensive purchase until the current economic uncertainties are removed and we all start to live in a shiny, happy new world where there is more than enough money to go around and we all live happily ever after.
