Street Scene in Asmara, Eritrea. Picture by Eric Lafforgue. All rights reserved. The Eritrean car market is very easy to decipher because a handful of cars clearly dominate the streets. In all likeliness and judging by the number of old gen models filling the streets, the Toyota Hilux should be…
Toyota Prado in Cotonou, Benin 2010 * Click on title for more street scenes/videos with Beninese rap music! * Relatively developed market in Benin with the Toyota Hilux and Prado in all likeliness dominating the new car sales. Other successful models include the Honda CR-V, Hyundai Accent, Nissan Frontier, Toyota…
The Spanish car market is down 26% year-on-year in November at 64,515 registrations, but still up 6% year-to-date. No surprises at #1, the Seat Ibiza is still the best selling car in Spain at 3.7% this month. The Nissan Qashqai's strong performance at #2 with 2,093 sales and 3.2% enables…
Ford Ranger in Freetown, Sierra Leone * Click on the title for more street scenes and video! * Only a couple of recent videos of the streets of the country are available, and there are very few new cars in them which makes it very difficult to estimate best car…
* Click on title for street scenes and video! * Extremely limited new car market in Chad, with the only recent cars in the streets of capital N'Djamena being the Toyota Hilux and Corolla. Most recent videos on YouTube date back to 2007/2008, so it's impossible to know whether the…
Toyota Corolla in Bujumbura, Burundi * Click on title for more street scenes! * Around 50% of the cars in circulation in the capital Bujumbura is a Toyota Corolla, so in all likeliness the model should lead the car sales in Burundi. The Toyota Hilux also seems to be doing…
In a very stable market (+2% year-on-year), Skoda delivers a 1-2-3 in November: the Skoda Octavia reaches a very solid 16.2% share (vs. 15.4% YTD) whereas the Skoda Fabia slips back below 10% at 8.8%, and the Superb climbs back onto the podium with 3.1%. The Ford Focus is #4…
Hard times for the Italian car market, down 21% in November with 146,307 registrations. The Year-to-date figure is down 8% at 1,840,511. The Fiat Panda is #1 in Italy for the first time since May with 10,736 sales and 7.3%, ahead of the Punto at 10,066 (6.9%). The Punto's 1st…
In this blog I normally focus on best performances and don't dwell on the weak ones, but this is such shocking news that it had to be the main headline: the Tana Nano only found 509 new owners in the whole of India last month... This is very bad news…
The Greek car market is falling further into recession, down 63% year-on-year in November. The Year-to-date figure is down 35%. Traditionally very volatile, the Greek models ranking is led this month by the Opel Corsa at a very impressive 7.4% market share, followed by the Ford Fiesta (5.2%) and the…
Toyota Prado in Lome, Togo * Click on title for more street scenes and video * Very little information to draw on as far as the car market in Togo is concerned. Based on only a few videos and photos of the streets of Lome, my bet is that the…
Dutch car sales are up 38% year-on-year this November, and the year-to-date figure is up 25% at 472,022 registrations. The VW Polo consolidates its newfound leadership in the country with a 2nd month in a row at #1 and 5.4%, followed by the Opel Corsa in very good shape at…
Very healthy Taiwanese market in November at 32,738 registrations, the 2nd best figure this year. Talk about an uneventful month though: the November Top 12 is exactly the same as the YTD ranking! While the Toyota Corolla stays #1 by far at 11.3%, the Nissan Tiida at #2 (4.9%) is…
The Gabonese market is down 2% over the first semester 2010 with 2,147 sales, its lowest level in 10 years. The most recent data by brands is for 2009 when the market fell by 7.5% at 4,638 sales. Toyota was 1st with 31.3% of the market, followed by Mitsubishi (18.7%),…
* Click on title for street scenes and videos! * No less than half the cars in circulation in Bamako, Mali's capital and biggest city, are old Mercedes imported from Europe: mainly 1980's Mercedes 190 & 220/230 and 1990's Mercedes C Class. As far as new cars are concerned, the…