Focus Europe’s Top Model in Q1

PARIS – The Ford Focus was Europe’s best-selling car in the first quarter, edging ahead of the VW Golf on the strength of the U.K.’s March registration boom, but it probably has dropped back a slot with April sales.

For the quarter, Focus deliveries totaled 143,165 units against 126,450 for the Golf and 124,497 for the third-place Peugeot 207.

The Opel Corsa (109,312) and Renault Clio (108,234) were a distant fourth and fifth in the competition for European sales leadership.

The Focus and Corsa are the No.1 and No.4 models, respectively, in the U.K., which twice a year has a bumper sales month when license-plate registrations change. (The Corsa is sold under the Vauxhall brand in Britain.)

Both models rose in the ranks in March but will drop again later, says Jean-Michel Prillieux, the consultant at Mavel SA in France who compiled and analyzed the sales figures. The Ford Fiesta and Opel Astra also gained in March.

The current-generation Golf, Megane and Fiesta all are at the end of their sales lives, and Prillieux notes demand is holding up better for the Golf and Fiesta than for the Megane.

Prillieux says the Fiat Punto is suffering “notably because the Italian market is slowing, (and there is) competition from the Fiat 500 in its base versions and from the Fiat Bravo in its upper end versions.”

Delays in reporting mean Europe-wide registration figures are not yet available for April or May, but 4-month results have been released in Germany, the U.K. and Spain. They confirm the strength of the Golf in Germany, where sales of 79,860 units through May are more than twice that of the second-place VW Passat. The Focus has netted fewer than the 22,890 sales of the 10th place Mercedes-Benz A-Class.

In the U.K., the Focus is the top-selling car at 44,324 units, while the Golf is in fifth place at 24,931. The Focus also leads the Spanish market, at 24,733 units, against the 13,185 of the seventh-ranked Golf.