New car registrations were down 15% in August compared to the same month of 2020. Cumulatively, the French automobile market shows an increase of 12.8% compared to last year (- 23.3% to 2019).
The summer period has not really smiled on the French automotive market. After declines of 14.7% in June and 35.4% in July, new car registrations fell 15% in August compared to the same month last year, totaling only 88,064 units on this month, which nevertheless had an additional working day (according to data from NGC-Data®). It was predictable as new car sales started to rise again over the same period last year. Vehicle registrations had not fallen below the 100,000 unit mark in August since 2016 (98,211 units at the time). If we compare the volume of the last month compared to August 2019, the fall turns out to be even more brutal:
– 31.9% and a deficit of more than 41,000 cars.
Small month of August for French brands
Renault, whose registrations fell by 9.2% (compared to 2020), took back orders for the automotive market this month with a share of 14.6%. Despite a fall of 34.2%, Peugeot is not very far behind (share of 14.2%). Citroën completes the podium (10.1% share). To note that Dacia, which represented 8.9% of the market in August, recorded a 3.7% increase in its registrations. Over this month, French brands were generally struggling, posting only a 40% share of the automotive market (including DS and Alpine), against 43.8% in August 2020 and 41.2% in 2019 On the side of imported brands, Volkswagen has signed a jump of 39.5% this month (share at 6.8%). Toyota held up well, showing only a 5.2% decline (-3% compared to August 2019).
An advance that has melted compared to 2020
Over the first eight months of 2021, the French automotive market shows an increase of 12.8% compared to the same period in 2020, totaling 1,126,539 units. It has left feathers over the last three months because at the end of May the increase reached 50.1%. “Taking into account on the one hand the delay accumulated since the beginning of the year and this summer, on the other hand the supply and production difficulties, it seems more and more improbable to reach the threshold of 1.8 million registrations in 2021. Thus the 2021 market will barely recover half of the 2021 loss ”, analysis Éric Champarnaud, president of Autoways. In comparison with the 2019 financial year, vehicle registrations are down 23.3%, or a loss of more than 341,000 new cars. Peugeot’s market share stood at 17.5% at the end of August, far ahead of Renault (15.8%) while that of Citroën remained below the 10% mark (9.7%).
