Fiat rode out the sharply falling pan-European new car market last month keeping its market share pretty steady, helped by the arrival of the new Fiat Grande Punto and the Alfa Romeo 159. "The good results achieved in October 2005 were possible partly thanks to the marketing in Europe of the new Punto for which we have already received 44,000 orders," said a Fiat Auto spokesman. The Panda continues to be the division's biggest star, commanding a 29.6 pct share of A-segment, while the Fiat Croma and Alfa 159 have both made good inroads into D-segment.

Overall Western European (counting the 15 European Union member nations, plus the EFTA countries) car sales fell by 2.6 percent last month, to put in their worst performance since 1996, led down by a very weak British market (down 10.8pct year-on-year) which proved itself impervious to a wave of discounting and a number of significant new models arriving in the showrooms. Other big fallers included the Netherlands (-11.6pct), Spain (-9.6pct) and France (-5.8pct). Fiat Auto's home market, Italy, rose 5.5pct year-on-year to put a difficult run behind it, while Europe's biggest new car market Germany, gained 3pct. Fiat Auto (including Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Lancia and Maserati) held onto its market position very well, grabbing 6.9 percent of the overall market (down just 0.2pct on October 2004). A total of 76,717 new Fiat Auto vehicles were registered last month across Europe, slightly down from 80,422 units in Oct 2004.
 

Fiat Auto - helped by the arrival of the new Grande Punto and the Croma continuing to adhere to its sales targets - held its market share unchanged a 5.3 pct. (58,338 new Fiat cars and light commercials were sold last month, as opposed to 59,794, a small 2.4 pct decline). Sales though are far more profitable for Fiat now than was the case last year as Group and Auto Division CEO Sergio Marchionne has made stripping out the unprofitable fleet deals a target, and so the result is one that Fiat can build upon in the final two months of the year.

Lancia's market share contracted very slightly, to 0.8 pct (down by 0.1pct on October 2004), while Alfa Romeo were in very much the same position as their market share slipped from 0.9 pct to 0.8 pct year-on-year. This equated to 8,738 new Lancias being registered last month (9,939 in Oct 2004, down 12.1 pct year-on-year), while Alfa Romeo shifted 9,405 cars (as opposed to 10,349 in Oct 2004, down 9.1 pct year-on-year).

Fiat Auto as a whole has now sold 804,945 cars from January-October of this year to hold a 6.5 pct share of the market combined for the first 10 months of the year (as opposed to Jan-Oct 2004 when 915,059 had been registered, a 7.4 pct share of the Western European new car market. Fiat branded vehicles account for 588,551 of the sales, 101,999 are Lancia (up 4.2 pct on Jan-Oct 2004's total of 97,862) while 109,847 are Alfa Romeos.