If only every market for the Fiat brand could mirror France in 2018 as its barnstorming sales run has continued throughout June with sales up a massive 42.4% year-on-year to make it the country’s second best performing passenger car brand in these terms, easily beating the overall market which continued its positive trend.
While Fiat’s sales declines run across most of Europe, starting with its home market, as well as on key global market's for the brand such as the US and Brazil, it's a totally different story in France where Fiat posted a further 10,507 sales last month.
That 42.4% rise was the second best of all brands in year-on-year terms behind only VW's Spanish SEAT brand (+50.6%) while Peugeot-Citroen's 'DS' division (+38.7%) and Jaguar (+33%) we're the next closest, albeit all these three brands come off much smaller volumes.
Alfa Romeo however didn't enjoy much luck in France last month at all and, despite having the Stelvio alongside the Giulia in the showrooms, it ran out of steam and fell 16.8% year-on-year to 1,033 units.
Finally, for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) Maserati sold 67 cars in France during June, down 11.8% year-on-year, and Jeep weighed in with 1,377 units, up 11.3%. Meanwhile Ferrari sold 35 cars, up 16.7%.
For the year-to-date the story is also very rosy for Fiat with 44,408 units sold, up 19.7% on the same six months last year, to put the Italian volume brand amongst the market’s best performers and ahead of the overall positive market.
Despite being seeing its sales hemorrhaging on other markets the elderly 500 hatchback has driven Fiat's performance in France so this year and with 14,815 sales for the year-to-date it’s the brand’s best seller and the seventeenth most in demand car on the market.
The 500X has also enjoyed a cracking first six months of 2018 and its 8,088 units sold makes it the thirty-first best seller on the market while four places further back the Tipo weighs in with 7,481 sales. The Panda, with 6,847 sales for the year-to-date, makes it four Fiat models amongst the top forty best sellers on this market so far this year.
Despite enduring a poor June, one of the key selling months of the year in France, Alfa Romeo is still positive for the year-to-date and is up 4.7% to 4,816 units.
Maserati is relatively flat after the first half of the year as its 348 units sold is down 3.9% while Ferrari inches up 4.9% to 149 units. Finally, for FCA, Jeep is up 37.1% to 7,451 units with the bulk of those sales split very evenly, with 3,682 in favour of the Renegade 3,559 units for the Compass.
