Manufacturers: no trend reversal: boom in registrations of new cars in September

The plus sounds huge, but is only a flash in the pan: according to the Federal Motor Transport Authority, 17 percent more new cars will be registered in Germany in September.

Manufacturers: no trend reversal: boom in registrations of new cars in September

The plus sounds huge, but is only a flash in the pan: according to the Federal Motor Transport Authority, 17 percent more new cars will be registered in Germany in September. The increase is primarily due to the processing of existing orders. Audi benefits particularly strongly, while Opel is crushed.

The German car market continued to recover in October. After new registrations had already risen sharply in September, around 208,600 vehicles came out last month, 17 percent more new cars than a year ago, as reported by the Federal Motor Transport Authority.

However, this is still not a trend reversal. Rather, the manufacturers are continuing to reduce their high order backlogs, which had accumulated due to the lack of materials. "After the record low in the previous year, the past month was still the second weakest October in history," said VDIK President Reinhard Zirpel. The management consultancy EY spoke of an "intermediate high" that should soon be over due to the weak economy and dwindling purchasing power. "The inventory is very high, the incoming orders are very bad," summed up an industry representative. The strong growth cannot hide this, said Zirpel. New registrations are still well below the long-term average.

The importers' association assumes that customers' reluctance to buy will soon affect the market just as much as the strained supply chains. The bottleneck in semiconductors, which has persisted for two years, is now easing somewhat, but logistics problems are increasing. The Opel mother Stellantis complained about a lack of truck drivers, which is why new vehicles accumulated in the courtyards.

In the statistics of the Flensburg registration authority, the VW subsidiary Audi achieved the highest growth among German manufacturers with almost 95 percent in September, followed by the VW brand with plus 45.9 percent. Ford increased by 19.3 percent, Mercedes-Benz by 18.5 percent. The Stellantis subsidiary Opel, on the other hand, sold a fifth less of its vehicles, the new registrations of its French sister Peugeot shrank by a quarter and at Renault they fell by 20 percent. The luxury brand BMW also had to lose feathers - minus 13.9 percent. Since the beginning of the year, new registrations have fallen by 5.5 percent to around 2.08 million vehicles.