France 1-20 August 2014: Volkswagen up 35%, Nissan up 29%

VW Golf

* See the Top 10 best-selling models and brands by clicking on the title! *

After a two month-hiatus due to the summer holidays, the French weekly updates are back on BSCB! Bad news: the French new car market continues to be very wobbly, and August traditionally being by far the slowest month of the year, we have less than 45,000 new registrations over the first 20 days of the month, up 1.3% year-on-year. French manufacturers are particularly weak, holding only 40% of their home market vs. 50.2% year-to-date… Peugeot leads the way at 6,544 sales (-5%) above Citroen (+1%) and Renault (-22%) who traditionally backloads its months so nothing to worry about. Volkswagen (+35%) thanks to the Golf (#4) and Polo (#8) and Nissan (+29%) thanks to the new Qashqai, really impress, while Dacia is up 16% with the Sandero at #3 and the Duster at #6 and Mercedes catches up on a month of August 2013 disrupted by immobilised sales of A and CLA-Class at +90%.

Previous post: France July 2014: Now with Top 300 models and Top 50 brands!

One year ago: France 1-26 August 2013: Citroen C4 Picasso in shape

Full 1-20 August 2014 Top 10 models and brands Ranking Tables below.