It turned out to be a dismal December for Fiat Group Automobiles (FCA) in Germany as both Fiat and Alfa Romeo saw their sales slump by more than a quarter although it wasn’t enough stop both of them finishing the year on Europe’s biggest new car market firmly in positive territory.
The German new car market added a further 253,950 new car registrations during December to end the year just gone on something of a whimper, down by 1% on the final month of 2016.
That quarter of a million new cars sold in December meant a total of 3,441,262 new cars were sold in Germany for the whole of 2017 and that represented a mild recovery as it was up 2.7% on the full year of 2016.
The Fiat brand rounded out 2017 with 3,714 sales during December which represented a sharp year-on-year fall of 25.7% and its share of total market sales in Germany for the month contracted to 1.5%.
However, that wasn’t enough to dent a very positive year for the Fiat brand and 84,324 sales for the whole of 2017 was up 9% year-on-year, comprehensively outperforming the total market and making it the tenth best performing brand when taken in year-on-year terms. Fiat’s full year market share came in at 2.5%.
More worryingly for FCA, German consumers shunned Alfa Romeo during December and its recent good run of sales growth was abruptly reversed as it plunged 27.8% year-on-year off the back of just 340 sales for the month, this fall coming despite having the new Giulia and Stelvio in the showrooms. That gave Alfa Romeo a 0.1% share of the market for the final month of the year.
That bleak December performance didn’t bite into a very positive full year though for Alfa Romeo as 6,096 units sold meant it was up 42% over 2016 and it was the second best performing brand on the market in year-on-year terms after U.S. electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla. Alfa Romeo’s full year market share was 0.2%.
There was some black ink for FCA during December in Germany though as the Jeep brand bucked the market trend to climb 11.4% to 1,252 vehicles. For the full year the U.S. off road brand finishes up on a total of 13,990 sales which is 9.4% down on 2016 and makes Jeep the third worst performing brand on the market in year-on-year terms after DS and Honda.
