Dacia, Fiat and Hyundai April Sales Go Up Thanks to Scrapping Bonus

Inexpensive subcompact and compact cars have succeed in the difficult month of April where luxury models and SUVs have failed. Carmakers such as Fiat, Hyundai and Dacia have governments to thank for that, since it was their subsidies rewarding people who buy the aforementioned types of vehicles that boosted their sales, an analyst with the IHS Global Insight's office in Frankfurt told Autonews.

"Because of scrappage schemes, many people are rushing to buy affordable cars. When people are looking for bargains they automatically think of brand of brand like Dacia and Hyundai," said Christoph Stuermer.

Let's take Germany for example. As you might recall from our report on Renault's financial results, Germany was the only country on the old continent to have recorded growth in the first three months of year. Thanks to the scrapping bonus and the doubling of Dacia sales, the French group's sales went up by 3.4% in the first quarter. The French manufacturer said that the Romanian brand skyrocketed 29% across Europe, thanks to the same scrapping schemes.

For April, the Dacia brand went up 60.4 percent to 23,654 units, according to figures released Thursday by the European auto manufacturers association, ACEA. Hyundai had a more modest increase of 9.7 percent to 27,454 units, while Fiat brand sales climbed 5.4 percent to 99,918 units.

While low-cost brands enjoy increases, luxury cars and SUVs are not helped at all by the scrapping incentives. The aforementioned source wrote that Mercedes-Benz sales were down 26.9 percent to 51,855 units, BMW slipped 33 percent to 44,676 and Land Rover dropped 45.6 percent to 3,950.