French new car sales reportedly fell 10.1% in July – giving up two consecutive months of higher sales – though underlying sales so far this year showed that one Europe’s worst-hit auto markets was stabilising after nearly a year of steady declines.
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New car registrations in July totalled 168,461 units compared with 187,287 a year earlier, French automakers’ association CCFA said in a statement cited by Reuters.
On an underlying basis – assuming the same number of working days in July versus the year-ago-period – sales fell 5.8%, the report noted.
“Certainly July does not confirm the trend of a stabilising market seen in May (+4.8%) and June (+6.3%) but in a market that remains erratic, the month of July weighs less and less heavily,” the CCFA said, according to Reuters.
It reportedly added that car sales were typically less in the summer months compared with other months.
For the first seven months of the year, new car sales slipped 1.6% to 1,236,268 versus a year ago, Reuters said.
According to the news agency, Renault saw sales fall 18.9% in July, while sales at rival PSA Peugeot-Citroen fell 10.4%.
