Serbia August 2017: Police order pushes Skoda Rapid to 21.6% share

* See the Top 35 brands and Top 10 models by clicking on the title *

According to data shared with us by our partner CE Auto, new car sales in Serbia are up 24% year-on-year in August to 2.355 registrations, lifting the year-to-date total up 15% to 20.900. Local publication Vrele Gume has these figures at 2.030 and 20.023 respectively. The August Serbian sales charts are biased by a large order of 710 Skoda Rapid and Rapid Spaceback by the national police force whose delivery has kicked off this month as is shown in the above video. This unusual order pushes the Rapid to 16.6% market share for the month while the Rapid Spaceback has 5% of the market in 2nd place. Below, the locally-produced Fiat 500L, still #1 year-to-date, drops 40% to #3 but the Renault Clio is up 121% to #4. The Opel Corsa, Citroen C3 and VW Caddy also break into the Serbian Top 10 in August. The brands ranking published by Vrele Gume bizarrely doesn’t take into account the special Police order, only allocating 209 sales to Skoda (-10%) whereas the Rapid clocked up a total 509 units this month. This retains Skoda in 2nd place below Fiat (-11%), with Volkswagen (+33%), Renault (-9%) and Opel (+6%) rounding up the Top 5. Peugeot (+52%), Jeep (+100%), Mini (+125%), Mercedes (+145%), Suzuki (+171%), Land Rover (+200%) and Citroen (+236%) post the most spectacular gains this month.

Previous month: Serbia July 2017: Berlingo and C3 push Citroen up 7-fold

One year ago: Serbia August 2016: Hyundai Tucson breaks into podium

Full August 2017 Top 35 brands and Top 10 models below.