SUVS DRIVING THE BOOM IN SALES
OCTOBER saw the highest sales for the month in Europe since 2009, with 1,208,700 cars leaving forecourts from Warsaw to Waterford. The growth was down to SUVs, with the market share topping 40 per cent for the first time according to research by business analysis company Jato.
Sales overall were were up by 8%, with 17 of the 27 countries in the survey recording double-digit growth. Fears of recession in Germany don’t seem to have affected the market there, which grew by 13 per cent. SUV sales were up by a whopping 22 per cent on the same period last year, mostly from the small and compact segments.
The top performing countries were Romania, with October sales up by 57 per cent compared to last year, while second place was a surprise – Ireland.
Volumes here rose by almost 30 per cent for the month, though the year to date still is down almost 7 per cent.
The news across the water wasn’t great, no doubt due to Brexit uncertainty. Car sales in the UK dropped 6.7 per cent, compared with gains in countries that slowly have climbed out of recession, such as Greece (up 1.8 per cent), Italy (6.8 per cent), Spain (7.6 per cent), and Portugal (12.8 per cent).
There were some shocks in the survey too. The once-omnipotent Opel fell out of the top 10 brands, as did Fiat. Volvo outsold Nissan, and Porsche outsold Honda. The biggest player in the market was the Volkswagen Group; its cars accounted for one in four of all sales in October. The Golf was the overall bestseller, with the Tiguan the bestselling SUV. Other strong performers from the family stable were the Audi A4, A6 and Q2, the SEAT Arona and the Skoda Kodiaq, the latter of which saw sales increase by an amazing 181 per cent.
New arrivals made their mark, notably the VW T-Cross (helped by an eye-catching partnership with model and actress Cara Delevigne), which sold 13,557 units, followed by the Citroën C5 Aircross, Skoda Scala, Mazda CX-30, SEAT Tarraco, KIA Xceed, DS3 Crossback and Skoda Kamiq.
Overall, the top 10 bestsellers in Europe were the Golf, the Renault Clio, VW Polo, Ford Fiesta, VW Tiguan, Toyota Yaris, Renault Captur, Peugeot 208, Citroën C3 and Skoda Octavia.
And, as we have noted before, there was a jump overall in sales of fully or partially electric vehicles, with one ten new cars now reliant at least in part on battery power.