Germany Private Sales February 2014: Skoda Fabia up to #4

Skoda Fabia

* See the Top 135 best-selling models by clicking on the title! *

* See the overall Germany February 2014 post here *

As is the tradition on BSCB I share with you today detailed Private Sales (PS) data for Germany. These rankings are always a little controversial because of the definition of a ‘private sale’ in Germany. Are counted as private the cars sold to private buyers. Demo cars, rental cars and long-term leases are not counted as private along with cars sold to companies. This explains the fact that as cars become more expensive, their Private Sales ratio tends to drop: a lot of them are actually on a long-term lease, which can be argued is a private ‘sale’. In January 75,575 new vehicles were sold to private buyers in Germany, that’s a 36.1% PS ratio compared with 37.9% over the Full Year 2013. This month the VW Tiguan climbs to 2nd spot below the Golf and above the Polo.

92.9% of Chevrolet Trax buyers in Germany are private this month.

In spite of its age, the Skoda Fabia is up 4 spots on January to land at an excellent 4th place with 1,644 private sales vs. #21 in the overall ranking. Like last month, the Dacia Sandero is the most popular “true” foreigner (meaning if we exclude Skoda and Seat) with German buyers, ranking #12 with an always outstanding 88.3% PS ratio. Other great performers at the PS ratio game include the Chevrolet Trax (92.9%), Dacia Duster (84.5%), Dacia Logan (83.4%), Honda CR-V (81.7%) and Chevrolet Captiva (81%). The success of Chevrolet can be explained by the hesitation of leasing companies to invest in a brand that will soon disappear from Europe.

Less than 15% of Opel Astra buyers in Germany are private so far this year.

At the other end of the scale, less than 10% of BMW 5 Series buyers are private this month (9.8%), with models in a similar situation including the Audi A4 (10.4%), VW Passat (10.6%), Audi A6 (11.5%) and Ford Mondeo (11.7%). Finally Opel continues to struggle with private buyers in Germany, with the Corsa owing its surge to 5th place in the overall German ranking to non-private purchases (only 13.3% of buyers are private) while the Astra is at 13.4% and the Insignia at 13.7%.

Previous month: Germany Private Sales January 2014: Opel Mokka up to #4, Dacia Sandero #6

One year ago: Germany Private Sales February 2013: Renault Twingo in Top 10!

Full February 2014 Top 135 models Ranking Table below.