Hot on the heels of news that Fiat has turned in an impressive March in its home market comes the news that it more than doubled its sales on the key German market last month.

With emergency German government incentives to scrap older, polluting cars kicking in last month, Fiat has been one of the big winners on Europe's biggest new car market while the traditional upmarket prestige brands such as BMW and Mercedes-Benz suffered. Sales of micro-urban cars more than doubled last month while smaller cars climbed by 75 pct as the whole market leapt by 39.9 percent year-on-year. The data, released by automotive body KBA, reveals that 400,965 new vehicles were registered in Germany during March.

With 28,876 units registered during March the Fiat brand saw its sales rising by 218.7 pct year-on-year as German consumers shunned bigger, more luxurious cars in favour of smaller, efficient models. In fact Fiat sold more cars than establish domestic market giants BMW/Mini (24,820 units; - 1.1 pct), Audi (21,301 units; +2.3 pct) and Mercedes-Benz (27,366 units; -6.7 pct) as it took a 7.2 pct slice of all registrations.

Alfa Romeo saw its March sales rising by 257.3 pct year-on-year as it delivered 1,172 cars, demand led by the new MiTo, to new owners, although the figures are somewhat distorted by the temporary closure of its Pomigliano d'Arco factory at the beginning of last year which slowed up manufacturing at the time of the Alfa 147, 159, 159 Sportwagon and GT Coupé. Lancia also outperformed the overall market, and with 459 cars delivered it was up 63.3 pct. This means that Alfa Romeo took a 0.3 pct share of the market while Lancia was on 0.1 pct.

After the first quarter of the year the Fiat brand has 43,956 registrations which puts it 100.6 percent up on last year and equates to a 5.1 pct share of all German sales; Alfa Romeo has sold 2,409 of its cars so far this year putting it up 91.8 pct year-on-year and giving it a 0.3 pct market share; meanwhile Lancia is on 995 units for the year-to-date and is up 22.5 pct year-on-year to hold a 0.1 pct share of the market.