- David Hort
Volkswagen Golf tops European sales charts
The Volkswagen Golf is the bestselling car in Europe with 449,882 new car registrations for the year-to-date.
The Golf’s success is the icing on the cake for Volkswagen whose Polo supermini was also the second most popular car in the European marketplace with 329,891 sales in 2011-to-date, according to figures revealed by Jato.
That, along with the Volkswagen Passat’s 215,724 sales - making it the seventh best-selling car in Europe – was enough to thrust the German manufacturer to the front of the pack; with 1,550,036 sales in 2011, it’s the best selling manufacturer of the year.
It storms to the title ahead of Ford who is more than half a million new car registrations behind Volkswagen thanks in the main to the Fiesta supermini, with 322,969 unit sales, and the Focus hatchback, with 260,749 sales.
Almost one third of the Fiesta’s European sales have taken place in the UK while more than one quarter of all Ford Focus’s sold in Europe are found in the UK, too.
Despite Vauxhall’s ascendancy over Volkswagen in the UK, it and sister brand, Opel, fall way behind their German counterpart on the continent with Renault also selling more models than the GM-owned brand.
Despite its poor performance in the UK, Renault managed to shift 961,256 units in 2011, unfortunately that figure is 8.5 per cent down on sales figures set in 2010.
The performance of the French manufacturer may come as a surprise given its recent announcement that it will be trimming its range of deadwood and getting rid of nine models in all, including the entire Laguna range.
State of the market
Generally, most European manufacturers have taken a hit in terms of sales in 2011 with the three leading German manufacturers – BMW, Audi and Volkswagen – the only ones to improve on 2010 sales.
More telling is the performance of Renault, Peugeot and Fiat whose sales have dropped by 8.5, 8.3 and 17.5 per cent respectively.
The good news doesn’t stop there for Germany. As well as being home to the only manufacturers in the top ten bestseller list to register an increase in sales in 2011, it’s also the only major European market to experience an increase in sales when compared to figures in 2010.
More cars were sold in Germany than any other market with 2,929,133 new car registrations in 2011 – up 9.1 per cent on figures from the same point in 2010.
For the market as a whole, the picture is less rosy with a 1.2 per cent fall in sales for the year-to-date, however given the Euro Zone crisis and the difficult economic climate, it’s probably not as far behind the eight-ball as people feared.
"The decline in sales during November is further evidence that the new car market continues to be at the mercy of poor European economic conditions. Despite this, however, there are certain makes that continue to appeal to consumers, demonstrated by the strong sales performances of Volkswagen and Audi in November," said Gareth Hession, vice president for research at Jato.