FRANKFURT, May 15 (Reuters) - New car registrations in western Europe fell sharply last month with all European carmakers losing sales while Asian rivals gained, data published on Thursday showed.
Brussels-based automakers association ACEA said car registrations in the region fell 6.5 percent in April from a year ago, bringing sales for the first four months of the year to 5.02 million, down 3.4 percent from a year ago.
"Two main factors explain this drop: the effects of the military operations in Iraq on the overall economic environment and the fact that the Easter holiday fell in the month of April this year and in March in 2002, making comparisons difficult," said ACEA in a statement.
Hardest hit were Europe's biggest carmaker Volkswagen , whose sales dived nearly 11 percent last month and Italy's Fiat whose sales slumped 13 percent. Both lost market share.
The only European brands to notch up sales gains were Citroen, owned by PSA-Peugeot-Citroen , BMW's Mini and DaimlerChrysler's Smart.
Japanese and Korean carmakers continued to eat up market share and most of their brands gained sales in April. But U.S. peers General Motors and Ford saw their sales fall.
A weak economy and subdued consumer sentiment have hurt auto sales in recent months and most analysts predict a sales drop of two percent or more this year in the European car manufacturers' home market.