Germany 1992: VW Golf III and Opel Astra gear up

VW Golf III

* See the Top 100 best-selling models by clicking on the title! Thanks Florian for the data *

The German car market is down 5% this year at 3,929,558 registrations.This is the year the new generation VW Golf and Opel Astra gear up. The VW Golf III enjoys its first full year of sales and ranks directly #1 with 353,066 units for a 9% market share. It didn’t start very well though: the 3rd generation of VW’s best-seller had to wait until April to reach the #1 spot for the first time, but never looked back after that, peaking at 12.9% in October.

With the Golf II still selling 59,182 units this year, this means the Golf nameplate breaks its record as the best-selling nameplate ever in Germany in a single year with a whopping 414,132 units!

Opel Astra

The Opel Astra indeed started exceptionally well and was the #1 car in Germany in January, February and March. These would end up being the only 3 times the Astra nameplate ranked #1 in the 20 year-long nameplate history… It peaks at 10.3% share in November and finishes its first full year of sales at 300,804 units and 7.7%, making it by far the most successful nameplate introduction in the history of automobile in Germany! The other two nameplates to have ever sold over 300,000 units in a single year, the VW Beetle and Golf, took respectively 13 and 11 years to achieve this feat!

Audi 80

The VW Passat is down 16% but stays #3, followed by the Opel Vectra (-11%) while the Audi 80 is up one spot and 11% to #5, ahead of the BMW 3 Series, breaking its own record at a massive 148,257 units (+18%) and the Mercedes 200/300 at -11%. 3 more models sell upwards of 100,000 units this year to bring the total to 10, a record like last year.

The Renault 19 is the best-selling foreign model in Germany for the third year in a row at 97,086 sales and 2.5%, up one spot to #11, the highest ranking reached by a foreign model in the country since the Renault 4 in the early seventies. The Renault Clio (#15) is the only other foreign model in the Top 20.

Full Top 100 Ranking Table below.