The French car market grew by 14.77% in May over a year, preserving its double-digit growth since the beginning of the year, but this trend remains fragile, warned Thursday the manufacturers. A total of 145,538 new passenger cars were registered last month, said the Automotive Platform (PFA, representing manufacturers and equipment manufacturers) in its monthly delivery of statistics.
Since the beginning of the year, the market has grown by 16.32% year-on-year, a performance to be put into perspective because 2022 had been very weak. "We are in a market structurally much lower than what we were used to," PFA communications director Francois Roudier told AFP, recalling that before the crisis, "we were at more than 200,000, and up to 230,000 cars" delivered in May. On the positive side, "the vehicle delivery crisis is coming to an end," while under the effect of shortages of parts and components, some customers waited to get behind the wheel up to six months after signing their purchase order, according to Mr. Roudier. However, he warned against a depressed order in March and April: "-20% compared to last year", already mediocre. This phenomenon will weigh on deliveries in the coming months, he warned.
On the manufacturer side, the first group in volume last month remained Stellantis but with an increase of 6.45%, below the trend because burdened by the Fiat and Opel brands. The Franco-Italian-American colossus nevertheless reigns over almost 30% of the market since the beginning of the year, against 25.3% for its runner-up, the Renault group. The latter performed better than average in May, at 18% year-on-year growth, thanks in particular to its cheap car brand Dacia, whose deliveries jumped by 27.8%. On the third step of the podium is the German group Volkswagen, which has held 13.6% of the market since the beginning of 2023 and saw its deliveries increase by 21.7% last month, boosted by the performance of the high-volume brands VW (+34.5%), Skoda (+20.7%) and Seat (+21.2%).
