In total 305,057 new vehicles were sold in Germany during May, which represented a fall of 5.8% year-on-year as this market is seeing something of an erratic 2018 playing out so far.

The Fiat brand has lost favour with consumers on Europe’s biggest market and it slumped 14% to 9,148 units during May to take a 3% share of total market sales for the month.

Fiat’s Ducato was the best-selling model for the Italian volume brand, with 4,509 units finding buyers, most of those coming in ‘motorhome’ format, but that was down 7.9% on the same month last year, while for the passenger car portfolio the 500 led the way with just over three thousand sales and that was a jump of 17.9% year-on-year.

Both vehicles made the market’s top fifty sellers for May and for the year-to-date the Ducato has 16,793 sales and is up 6.5% year-on-year while the 500 rests on 13,119 units and is up 2.4% year-on-year. The 500 was the second-best seller in the “Mini” segment, adrift of the VW Up (3.845 units) but a thousand units clear of Opel’s third placed Adam.

Almost all sales of the Ducato were diesel models while for the 500 it was an almost complete petrol lockout.

Fiat’s next best seller was the A-segment Panda, which totted up 558 sales, while the Tipo came in with 458 units, and then the 124 Spider with 182 units, the Punto with 142 units, the Doblo with 131 units, the Talento with 99 units and finally the Fiorino with 43 units.

However, Alfa Romeo turned in a promising performance in Germany during May as it bucked the market’s downwards trend to climb 8.9% year-on-year to 621 units and collect a 0.2% share of the market.

The new Stelvio is now Alfa Romeo’s best seller in Germany and in fact, with 313 units sold in May, accounted for half the brand’s volumes; meanwhile the Giulia faded to 170 units. The ageing Giulietta added 106 units and finally the MiTo is still finding buyers to add a further 29 units.

Amongst the sportscar brands, Maserati’s top seller for the month was the Levante with 58 units finding buyers while the Ghibli and GranTurismo both recorded 22 sales apiece and finally the Quattroporte added 8 units.

For Ferrari the 488 Coupe/Spider led the way with 65 sales while the new Portofino added 11 units and there were two registrations recorded for the outgoing California and one for the last generation mid-size 458 Italia. VW Group owned Lamborghini’s sales were led out by 39 units of the Aventador.

Also, in the LCV segment, IVECO's daily van range notched up 82 sales in Germany last month and there were eight sales for the bigger Eurocargo.

Finally, for FCA, Jeep was up 29.1% to 1,479 units to take a half percentage points share of the market for May. The off-road brand was in fact the market’s second best performer in year-on-year terms last month, behind on PSA’s DS brand which was up 45.2% to 395 units while Alfa Romeo also got in on the act as it was the sixth best year-on-year performer for May.

Jeep’s clear most in demand model last month was the Compass, with 686 units finding buyers, while the Renegade (378 units), Grand Cherokee (229 units), Wrangler (125 units) and Cherokee (61 units) rounded out its May sales.

After the first five months of the year the German new car market is relatively flat (+2.6%) on the same period last year with 1,497,723 new vehicles having found buyers.

The Fiat brand is enduring a dismal year with its sales down 9.5% to 37,849 units so far this year to take a 2.5% share of the overall market.

Alfa Romeo’s decent May helps it to 2,554 units after five months and it’s up 1.8% year-on-year for the year-to-date which comfortably outperforms the overall market while its share of all sales stands at 0.2%.

Wrapping up for FCA, the Jeep brand has enjoyed a decent year so far, it’s up 14.5% to 6,635 units when compared to the first five months of last year and has a 0.4% share of all market sales.