VW Golf Back In Top Spot As European 'Scrappage Schemes' Bite

AUTO CENTRAL – may 18, 2009: JATO Dynamics, the world’s leading provider of automotive data and intelligence, has released its monthly European new car market analysis for April 2009, showing the Volkswagen Golf has re-claimed its crown as Europe’s best-selling car, while Volkswagen remains the best-selling brand.

Ford has kept up the pressure on its German rival however, with the new Fiesta continuing to increase its sales across Europe, up 19.7% year-to-date and 26.9% for the month of April. Fiesta has sold especially well in the ‘big 5’ European new car markets (Germany, UK, France, Italy and Spain), where its introduction has also coincided with scrappage schemes incentivising consumers towards new, smaller cars.

Beyond the Ford Fiesta, only two other cars in the top ten have managed to increase sales year-to-date over the same period in 2008, with the Volkswagen Polo up by a slim 0.7% and Fiat Panda up by an impressive 17.6%.

This small car success is in marked contrast to the overall European new car market, which dropped by 17.5% (247,001 units) in April 2009 versus April 2008, to a monthly total of 1,162,257 units. This translates to a year-to-date fall of 16.8% (or 925,225 units) versus the same period last year, with total sales of 4,576,015.

“National government scrappage schemes are really starting to have an impact, both in the sales volumes in different markets and in the type of cars being sold”, says David Di Girolamo, Head of JATO Consult. “The bigger picture shows the size of the drop in new car sales across Europe and we’ll continue to monitor this closely for signs of a wider improvement.”

All but one of the top ten best-selling models in Europe are now B or C segment cars, accounting for 1,031,780 sales year-to-date between them, or 22.5% of the total market.