French new car sales march 2012

Automotive Dealer - French new car sales march 2012 ; French new car registrations fell for the fifth consecutive month year-on-year in March, with PSA Peugeot Citroen (PEUP.PA) and Renault (RENA.PA) continuing to lose ground to Germany's Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) on their home turf.

Sales tumbled 23.5 percent to 197,033 vehicles, while light commercial vehicle registrations fell 12.2 percent to 36,493 last month, the CCFA automakers' association said on Monday. Overall light vehicle sales dropped 21.9 pct.

"This decline is spectacular but it was expected," said Flavien Neuvy, head of credit provider Cetelem's autos research unit. "We think nevertheless that the bulk of the drop for the year has been done in the first quarter."

The CCFA stuck to its forecast for the French auto market to contract by 8-10 percent this year.

"Today this range is still valid," CCFA President Patrick Blain told a news conference. "If we do minus 7 percent in the last three quarters, which is not absurd, we can achieve it."

Paris-based PSA Peugeot Citroen, Europe's second-biggest automaker after Volkswagen, posted a 33 percent decline to 59,290 car deliveries last month, while smaller domestic rival Renault suffered a 30 percent drop to 42,908.

The Volkswagen group's French new car sales fell a more modest 11.9 percent as it won business from rivals with aggressive pricing on models such as the Polo subcompact.

For the first quarter, the Volkswagen group's market share rose to almost 14 percent from 11.2 percent a year earlier, while PSA and Renault each shed more than 2 percentage points.

Shares in PSA and Renault were the biggest fallers on the French blue-chip CAC 40 index .FCHI, closing down 3.3 percent and 1.3 percent respectively.

Renault's commercial director for France, Bernard Cambier, said orders had rebounded last month, up 6 percent after drops of 8 percent and 9 percent in January and February, reaffirming the market forecast for the year.

"Overall, the auto market is falling a bit more than people had predicted," he said. "But generally, we remain fixed on a decline of the order of 10 percent in the market in 2012."

Along with France's carmakers, Fiat's (FIA.MI) sales suffered from the withdrawal of French government scrapping incentives that had boosted small-car deliveries through March 2011. The Italian brand posted a 41 percent sales decline to 4,588 new car registrations last month.

German premium automakers, meanwhile, also outperformed the French market, with BMW (BMWG.DE) brand car sales advancing 1.2 percent in March and Daimler's (DAIGn.DE) Mercedes brand recording a 29 percent gain.

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