Volkswagen and Toyota under siege in Europe
By: Glenn Brooks, Tuesday, March 16, 2010, AutomotiveWorld.com
A post-scrappage hangover may be gripping the German market (sales down 30% last month), but elsewhere in Europe a surge continues, especially in Italy, the new regional number one market.
In February, the Italian market, with 200,560 car sales (+21% year-on-year), was almost three times the size of the UK (+26% to 68,686) and comfortably ahead of France (+17% to 180,535). In Germany, meanwhile, sales fell to 194,846 vehicles, while the last of the big five, Spain, saw numbers rising by 47% to 91,281 units.
What these national totals do not show is the shift in regional influence by certain key players. It is interesting that Fiat Group was not able to lift its market share in Europe* by more than 5.1% in February, according to figures collated by ACEA. To be fair, overall registrations in the 30-market bloc rose by only 3.2% in the same month, but Fiat is clearly suffering at the hands of the more aggressive Renault, Peugeot, Citroen, Nissan, Hyundai and Kia brands in the larger markets outside Italy.
Having overtaken Opel-Vauxhall, Ford and Fiat, Renault has now halved the gap to Volkswagen
Volkswagen remains the regional number one brand, but it did lose market share in February, falling from 11.6% to 11.1%. The brightest rising star is Renault, which, having overtaken the Opel-Vauxhall, Ford and Fiat brands, ended the month with market share of 9.2% compared to 7.4% in February 2009.
Thanks in part to the success of the Golf and Polo in the UK and Italy, VW was still a comfortable 18,965 units ahead of Renault across Europe last month. But Volkswagen should be watching that gap closely: compared to February 2009, the region's new number two brand has more than halved the deficit.
PSA Peugeot Citroen, still firmly Europe's second largest OEM, had a good February, the new C3 off to a strong start in France and the low-priced 206+ doing well, though the Peugeot 308 was down a worrying 20% in the home market. The group saw its Europe-wide sales rise by 18.4%, 40,000 vehicles ahead of third placed Renault-Dacia (steady, year-on-year) and 59,000 behind the VW Group. This last number is of interest as in February 2009 PSA lagged the European number one by 85,000 vehicles.
Scrappage schemes, the main reason for PSA and Renault's improvements, are creating some statistical oddities: Dacia is now a larger brand than Opel in the French market, sales of its Sandero also surpassing those of the Ford Fiesta last month.
Dacia is now a larger brand than Opel in the French market
Opel is under attack in Germany, too, a market where in February 2009 it held the number two spot behind VW. Now thanks to an 82% surge in sales of the E-Class, Mercedes-Benz has pushed it down to third position. Worse, its lead over fourth placed Audi and fifth placed Ford was reduced to a mere 200 and 500 units respectively in February. The launch of the new BMW 5 Series this month may even see Opel drop to sixth place.
While Opel suffers, other players are rising towards mass-market status. Nissan, up 32.5% in the first two months, has closed the gap to Toyota to fewer than 36,000 vehicles. The equivalent total for this time last year was over 58,000 vehicles.
Nissan Europe might have its eyes on catching and passing Toyota, but another OEM has just pulled off an historic achievement by getting there first. Toyota stills leads for the year-to-date (97,767 sales, -6.9%), but in February, combined sales for Hyundai (26,114) and Kia (18,042) surpassed those for Toyota (43,531, -20%).
*EU27 excluding Malta & Cyprus, and EFTA excluding Liechtenstein
The opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Automotive World Ltd.
Published on Tuesday, March 16, 2010
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