France 1-7 August 2019: Citroen C3 #1, Smart Fortwo cracks Top 10

The Smart Fortwo is up 8-fold year-on-year to #8 overall in France.

French weekly data is back just in time for summer, and over the first week of August the market slides down -0.8%. Keep in mind these rankings need to be taken with a grain of salt as they are totally dependent on each manufacturer’s promotion strategy and some, such as Renault, backload their month so appear particularly weak at the start of each period. In this context, Peugeot (+1%) snaps the brands lead ahead of Renault (-13%) and Citroen (-8%) both in difficulty while Toyota (+29%) leapfrogs Volkswagen (-3%) and Dacia (-45%) to an excellent 4th place. But it’s Mercedes (+55%), Ford (+46%) and Kia (+39%) that score the largest gains in the Top 10 just as Suzuki and Smart jump to #11 and #12 respectively.

Model-wise, the Citroen C3 (+6%) surprises and takes the lead, and if in normal times I would warn Citroen fans not to get the champagne bottle out just yet, given the current generation transition by the Peugeot 208 (+3%) and Renault Clio Generation (-9%) and Clio 5 (#9), a freak monthly win by the C3 is actually possible, especially in a slow month like August. Meanwhile the Toyota Yaris (+27%) is up to a fantastic third place but the hero of the month is without contest the Smart Fortwo (+673%) up 8-fold on the same period in 2018 to 8th place – a ranking it normally only secures in Italy, reaching 510 sales in one week compared to 708 in the entire month of July. This is probably due to a batch of rental sales but impressive nonetheless.

Previous post: France July 2019: Citroen, Toyota, Mercedes help contain market loss to -1.8%, Renault down to lowest share this decade

Previous year: France August 2018: Pre-WLTP stock clearances pulls market up 40%

Full 1-7 August 2019 Top 10 brands and models below.