Thanks to a plethora of new and updated models, Mazda has found itself in the extraordinary situation of having overtaken Nissan in Europe’s largest national market.
German registrations data for March show sales of the Mazda3 surging by 88% year-on-year, with the brand’s monthly total reaching 7,093 units versus 6,997 for Nissan. Mazda Deutschland is also ahead of Peugeot (5,841) and was fewer than 400 cars behind Toyota (7,429) last month. Citroen (5,678), Suzuki (5,277), Kia (5,102) and Dacia (4,056) were similarly outsold but unlike Mazda, each has Europe-based manufacturing operations.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Mazda3 sales in March reached 2,712 units, which put the car in 33rd place just behind the Opel Adam (2,713) but ahead of the Renault Clio (2,588) and Nissan Qashqai (2,466). It wasn’t all good news for the brand from Hiroshima, with registrations of the CX-5 plunging by 28% to 1,993 cars. The facelifted model is just reaching showrooms now so this, combined with the imminent launch of the updated Mazda5 and the soon to arrive CX-3 could really make things interesting – an import brand outselling some of the biggest mass market names.
At a Europe-wide level, Mazda is on a roll, thanks to well received new products. According to data issued by ACEA earlier on 16 April, the brand’s sales rose by 15.1% across 30 markets, to 26,505 cars in March, giving it 1.7% of the overall market (+0.1%). Its total of 53,103 for the year-to-date places it ahead of JLR, Suzuki, Honda and Mitsubishi. Further, Mazda was also only 1,423 units behind Volvo last month.
