European car sales still suffering from crisis

Bad results
on big markets

The drop in
the number of cars sold is mainly due to disappointing sales on a number of big
markets, such as France (-11.2%), Italy (-10.3%) and Germany (-8.1%), as is
shown in the number of the European car federation Acea.

In the
Netherlands the drop was a staggering 36%, but that was because of strong sales
in the first half of the previous years. The consumers in the Netherlands had
anticipated on the introduction of stricter CO² rules starting 1 July 2012.
Partly because of that only 211,910 new cars were sold in the first six months
of 2013.

Only in
Cyprus, suffering strongly from the economic crisis, the drop was bigger in the
first semester at 42.5%. In June alone the drop in the Netherlands was 54%.

Volkswagen
controls quarter of the market

Devided by
car manufacturer Volkswagen remains comfortly in the lead with a market share
of 24.8%. The sales of the company did drop by 3.4% in the first six months of
the year, but that was a smaller decline than the rest of the market. Within
the group Seat performed very well: the brand saw its sales climb by 10%.

It went
less well for PSA Group (Peugeot, Citroën). It had a drop in sales of over 13%
in the first half of the year, mainly because of the struggling market in home country
France. Their market share dropped to 11.3%. Both Peugeot and Citroën
struggled.

The Renault
group did slightly better. Their sales dropped only 4.5%, causing their market
share to rise to 8.8%. The decline of the brand Renault was partly compensated
by the profits of subsidiary Dacia. GM and Ford complete the top five of
manufacturers.