Volkswagen Group’s market share in October 2016 fell from 25.2% to 24.9%. This decline was driven by significant decreases from the manufacturer’s core brand Volkswagen which dropped by 8%, as well as Porsche which posted a 12.2% decline.

In contrast, FCA was the biggest market share winner, increasing its share from 6.2% in October 2015 to 6.6% in October 2016. This increase was driven by the Lancia and Alfa Romeo brands with both posting double digit growth of 24.5% and 21.3% respectively.

Daimler also increased its market share as a result of the strong performance of Mercedes, which increased its registrations by 6.7% which was enough to offset the 0.5% decline of SMART. Other brands that registered significant increases were Kia, Seat, Jaguar, Abarth, Infiniti and Maserati with increases of 6.8%, 12.7%, 76.4%, 25.3%, 67.4% and 47.3% respectively.

Felipe Munoz, global automotive analyst at JATO Dynamics, commented: “As the growth in the market slowed in October, it was the manufacturers that rely most heavily on the Southern European countries or premium brands that performed the best. This shows that the market is shifting and going through a transition phase and we would expect the market to continue to fluctuate over the coming months.”

In the segment ranking, SUVs continued to perform well, with 302,851 registrations in October: a 12.1% increase on the same month last year. The compact (C-SUV) and midsize SUVs (D-SUV) posted increases of 22.5% and 20.1% respectively, whilst the B-SUV segment posted a small increase of 1.3%, and E-SUVs a decline of 1.8%.

The MPV segment showed the biggest market share decline of more than 1 percentage points, and a significant decline in registrations of 10.9%.