The Renault Clio has reached a nice milestone. In February it was the best-selling new car in Europe. With that, the Clio knocked the Volkswagen Golf off its throne after a long time. Furthermore, the European car market was generally in a strong downward trend last month, which is likely to continue strongly.
For a long time, the Volkswagen Golf was the undisputed number 1 in Europe, but that changed in February. From the European sales figures of Jato it can be concluded that the Golf was sold as much as 21 percent less last month than in the same month last year. The Clio also lost some (4 percent), but is just above the Gulf due to the much smaller decline in absolute numbers. The margin is small; less than 200 Clios were sold more than Golfs: 24,914 compared to 24,735. Of course, the popularity of the current Golf is rapidly decreasing, now that a new generation has stormed the market, where the Clio is still quite fresh. The new Peugeot 208 and Opel Corsa are also doing well; these took third and fourth place on the European market in February respectively.
The Netherlands
In the Netherlands, especially Kia did very good business last month. That brand has pushed Volkswagen off the lead and that is mainly due to the popularity of the Niro. The all-electric e-Niro is a sweetheart and with 1,054 copies, the Niro was even the best-selling car in February. Here, the Renault Clio is number two, followed by the Ford Focus. The Volkswagen Golf is in fourth place. The market for EVs in particular remains strong in the Netherlands; 22 percent of the cars sold last month were fully electric.
European market is collapsing
Nice news for Renault and Kia, but overall it looks bleak for almost all brands on the European market. Since 2015, the month of February was not that bad. Compared to February last year, sales fell 7 percent. Slightly less dramatic than January, when sales fell 7.6 percent, but the cumulative decline is significant. Now that the corona crisis has come on top of that, we can expect it to deteriorate even more. Incidentally, things were still relatively bad in the Netherlands in February, where sales were comparable to the same month last year.
