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U.K., Spain Shore Up November European Car Sales

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LONDON, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Western Europe car sales rose 1 percent in November compared with a year earlier as strong demand in Britain and Spain helped offset falls in Germany, France and the Netherlands, according to industry data compiled by LMC Automotive.

Registrations last month rose to 919,509 cars from 910,236 a year earlier, based on data compiled by the consulting firm, the slowest year-on-year increase since last November.

That meant the November annualised selling rate fell to 12.3 million cars, a 2.7 percent decrease from October's rate on a seasonally adjusted basis.

Overall this year, demand for cars has picked up across the region after a six-year slump with 2014 total sales expected to end the year nearly 5 percent higher than 2013 at just over 12.1 million, according to LMC.

However, the level remains well short of the roughly 14.5 million sales before the financial crisis and the recovery has been patchy from country to country.

LMC analyst Jonathon Poskitt told Reuters that automakers had found Britain to be a bright spot as other markets continue to perform sluggishly.

"The UK has been a driving force for the recovery we are now seeing in Western Europe car sales, it accounting for well over a third of regional growth in 2014," he said.

Britain, which saw a 33rd consecutive rise in cars sales in November, is on course for its strongest sales in a decade, boosted by cheap credit due to rock-bottom interest rates and a broader economic recovery.

In France, however, the continent's third-biggest market, sales fell by 2.3 percent compared with the same month last year, pushed lower by weakening consumer confidence.

Europe's biggest market Germany saw sales down 1.8 percent in November, although the drop was due to the one-off effects of new rules on tyre pressure raising the price of tyres and denting sales, according to a German industry body.

Sales continued to rise in other major markets Spain and Italy, according to the data which is an aggregation of monthly registrations reported by each country, but fell by nearly 20 percent in the Netherlands.

Britain was the only major market to see its seasonally adjusted sales rate rise compared to last month, with levels up 1.6 percent, whereas the figure fell 5.3 percent in Germany, 2 percent in Italy, 0.5 percent in France and 6.9 percent in Spain. (Reporting By Costas Pitas; editing by Susan Thomas)