Swiss Cars Sales 2016 moderately down standing over 0.3 million for the 6th year in a row. The podium was entirely won by German Brands with Volkswagen almost doubling BMW and Mercedes.
Market Outlook
There are encouraging signs from the consumer side of the economy: retail sales increased in November and bucked a two-year downward trend. The FocusEconomics panel expects growth of 1.5%, which is unchanged from last month’s Consensus. In 2018, panelists project that GDP will expand 1.6%.
Albeit with slight sales losses, the Swiss cars market in 2016 was one of the rare in Europe to decline y.o.y. with 317.318 units (-2.0%). Despite the registrations posted the third negative performance since 2010, it was the sixth consecutive year with over 0.3 million units sold.
According to data released by the Auto Suisse, the Association of local Automotive Importers, in December the cars passengers has been 35.331 sales (+8.2%).
Competitive Arena
Despite the Dieselgate, the market leader in 2016 was of course Volkswagen with 42.142 units (-0.2%) ahead of BMW and Mercedes respectively up 2.8% and 4.2% at 24.780 and 23.842. The greatest increases were reported for Jaguar, Cadillac, Bentley, Honda, Dacia and Alfa Romeo, while the best performers was Infiniti, surging 172.7%.
Lancia and Dodge posted the worst performances losing 33.9% and 30.4%, followed by Nissan, Citroen, Smart, Peugeot, Audi and Jeep.
The Volkswagen Golf was on the first step of the podium for the 23rd consecutive year with 11.988 units (-21.6%) ahead of the Skoda Octavia with 11.721 (-4.1%) and the Volkswagen Polo with 6.516 (+30.7%).
In fourth place, the new Volkswagen Tiguan with 6.434 units (+62.9%) was the most popular SUV in Switzerland.
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales for all Brands, top 10 Manufacturers Group and top 10 models.
