Car sales in Europe have shown year-over-year growth for the 14th consecutive month in October, and with an increase of 6,3% to 1.110.857 sales, the growth rate seems to increase as well. The year-to-date growth of the car market after 10 months stands at 6,1% with almost 11 million units.
The manufacturers to add the most sales in October, and year-to-date are still the Volkswagen Group and Renault-Nissan, each helped by strong sales of all of their volume brands, with no exception. Interestingly in third place for adding the most volume last month is Hyundai-Kia, with the gains evenly spread between the two brands. Thanks to a strong month of October, the Hyundai brand is now in positive territory year-to-date for the first time in 2014.
General Motors continues to struggle as the 95% drop in Chevrolet sales isn’t offset by the impressive gains of Opel/Vauxhall in October. Toyota Motor Corporation is also down for the third time in 10 months, but still in the black year-to-date. Tata Motors is down slightly as a small increase of Jaguar sales couldn’t make up for the loss at Land Rover. [Read more…]
Excellent performance of the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, outselling its main rival BMW 3-series for the first time since November 2012, thanks to its new generation and also helped by BMW’s decision to rename the coupe and convertible versions as the 4-series. It’s unlikely the C-Class will overtake the 3-series for the full year, but considering it’s less than 200 units behind the aging Audi A4 year-to-date, the Merc will have moved into second place in the first week of October.
September marks the 13th month in a row that the European car market increases year-over-year. At 1.267.068 units, the market has grown 6,1% when compared to September 2013, leading to a year-to-date tally of 9,85 million cars, which is up more than half a million on last year, or 5,6%. In September, the European car dealers sold over 500.000 cars more than they did in August, which is traditionally the slowest month of the year due to the summer holidays.
As a result, brands that are popular in the United Kingdom have sold exceptionally well in September. For example, the UK market accounted for more than half of all Ford cars sold in Europe, and GM’s UK Vauxhall brand outsold its twin Opel brand in all other European markets. Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz cars, which are usually heavily dependent on their German home market, sold more than one third of their European volume in Great Britain. For Jaguar and Land Rover and Bentley, the dependence on what used to be their home market becomes even more clear in September, with 80%, 72% and 74% of their sales respectively.
The next generation Volkswagen Passat midsized car will be introduced at the Paris Motor Show later this week, but run-out pricing of the outgoing model gave the Passat a last minute boost before handing over the moniker to its successor. VW also experienced strong demand for its European best seller the Golf as well as the recently updated Polo subcompact, which claimed a second place behind the Golf in the models ranking, outselling its rivals Renault Clio and Ford Fiesta. The Fiesta was down into fourth position in August, but will make a strong comeback next month, as September is traditionally the second best month of the year for car sales in the UK, which is the most important market for the subcompact Ford.
Any good news for other brands? Sure, it’s worth mentioning that the 
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In the last decade, as the European passenger car market has slumped from a record high of just over 16 million units in 2004 to a record low of 12,27 million in 2013, sales of Volkswagen have shown very little effect from this crisis. VW brand sales in 2013 were just 9.000 less than in 2004, and as a result the brand’s market share has grown from a low of 9,59% in 2004 to a record 12,57% in 2013. This means that VW has positioned itself as the clear market leader in Europe, leaving its three closest competitors Ford, Opel/Vauxhall and Renault scrambling for second place, all at least five full percentage points below the German brand.
Ford, Opel/Vauxhall and Renault each have set short- to mid-term goals of either reclaiming or maintaining a second place in the European brand charts, fully aware that’s the best they could hope for, as Volkswagen is too powerful to let any of them even come near. 
The biggest winner in July is once again the VW Group, reaching its highest market share of the European car market ever at just over 27%, with Skoda and Volkswagen as the brands with the biggest volume increases overall, followed by Dacia. Skoda has passed Citroën and Fiat in July to move into the top-10 in 9th place.
As the 208 is down again, it’s almost pushed out of the top-10, and is in danger of being overtaken as the brand’s best seller by the brand-new 308, already in 14th place. It would be the first time since at least a few decades and possibly ever that a Peugeot compact outsells the brand’s subcompact cars. And will the 308 also be able to outsell the Opel/Vauxhall Astra (11th place in July) next year, as its predecessor 307 managed to achieve in 2002, 2003 and 2004? I think it will.
Once again, the fastest gaining model in the top-10 is the Skoda Octavia, and (am I repeating myself too often here?) its platform siblings Seat Leon and Audi A3 are exploring new heights as well. Okay, I’ll add something new here: the VW Golf Sportsvan, replacing the Golf Plus, is selling like hot cakes as well, up to 52nd place with 7.432 sales, a figure it will undoubtedly improve further in the next couple of months. As a result, Volkswagen Group’s new modular MQB platform is already closing in on the 100.000 monthly units mark, with 97.198 cars sold on that platform in July. 
Unsurprisingly, the Volkswagen Golf is still the leader of the pack, all by itself outselling full brand line-ups like Hyundai or Nissan and Infiniti combined. It even has gained the most units of all models except for the Peugeot 2008, which was still in start-up mode last year.
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