German Auto 2016 moderately positive albeit the leader Volkswagen has lost sales. The Automotive sector is still pulling the German economy up. Infiniti was the best performer brand.
Market Outlook
The abrupt slowdown in the German economy in Q3 was confirmed by more complete data released by the Statistics Institute in November. Continued strong private consumption growth, which benefitted from record pension increases, healthy wage growth and low inflation, was not enough to overcome the negative contribution to growth from net trade.
Exports contracted in Q3, brought down by increased uncertainty in the international trading environment. Early data for Q4 paint a mixed picture with consumer confidence and retail sales trending downwards, while business confidence and industrial production stay robust and exports improve.
The automotive, industry, the largest in the country, arrived at the end of a new almost positive year, with both production, export and domestic sales up from the previous year.
According to data released by the V.D.A. (Verband der Automobilindustrie) and the V.D.I.K. (Association of International Motor Vehicles Manufacturers), the car passenger’s sales in December have been 256.533, up 3.7%, with the entire year sales at 3.351.000, up 4.1%, the third growth in series. Data are still far from the record hit in the 2009 at 3.8 million.
The light commercial vehicles sector was almost positive with sales up 8.7% at 257.000 (preliminary) with a total light vehicles figure of 3.6 million, the World’s fourth market.
Competitive Arena
Among the best selling 20 brands only two have ended the year down from 2015: Volkswagen, the leader, down 4.3% with 656.000 units and Hyundai, 9th with 107.000 sales, down 1.1%.
The best performance year on year was reported for Infiniti (+107%) hat did better than Jaguar, Lexus, Land Rover.
As far as the models ranking, the Volkswagen Golf was of course in first place selling 235.935 units (-12.9%) followed by the Volkswagen Passat with 77.000 units (-20.9%) and the Volkswagen Polo with 75.000 sales (+7.4%).
Behind the Mercedes C Class with 68.000 units (+1.6%), the Opel Astra with 65.000 (+16.1%) and the Volkswagen Tiguan with 61.000 (+3.8%).
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales for all Brands, top 10 Manufacturers Group and top 10 Models
