2018 European Automotive Sales by Brand – The Best-Selling Automotive Brands By Sales Volume
Among brands, Dacia is the biggest winner in Europe at almost +62,000 sales, closely followed by Jeep at almost +57.500 sales, ironically both brands from two of the three biggest losing manufacturers. After November, Peugeot was the #3 biggest growing brand in Europe, but it was overtaken in December by Seat (+46,500 vs. 44,700 sales). Audi is by far the biggest hit by the WLTP standards, losing almost 110,000 sales in 2018, all lost in the last four months of the year as sales of the brand were in the black before September 1st.
Nissan and Fiat also lost more than 70,000 sales in 2018, and both also lost most of their volume after September, as Nissan was down just 10,000 sales before the deadline kicked in, and Fiat was down 30,000 sales by then. Relatively, sales of the Chinese made and Italian assembled cars from DR Motor almost tripled, while India’s Mahindra and China’s SAIC MG were the only other brands to more than double their sales volumes. On the other end of the scale, Infiniti sales halved in 2018 as the brand hit a bump in its long and difficult road to acceptance in Europe. Sales of Lotus sports cars were down by a quarter as the brand is preparing a comeback under its new Chinese ownership by Geely. Bentley also saw an almost 20% decline in sales as it had to halt deliveries of some versions of its popular Bentayga SUV due to non-compliance with WLTP standards.
