New car registrations: Opel one of the few German winners in May

After Mercedes, Opel is the only major German carmaker

sold more cars in May than a year ago.

Ford also posted a plus.

The market as a whole was down a good tenth in the past month.

Only market leaders Volkswagen, Mercedes, Audi and BMW, who are tied, have a higher market share for the period from the beginning of the year to the end of May.

Ford ranks behind Opel, with Skoda, an import brand belonging to the VW Group, in between.

Thorsten Winter

Business editor and internet coordinator in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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As the Federal Motor Transport Authority further reports, the only German subsidiary of the Stellantis group has increased its new registrations by 5.5 percent, Mercedes has increased by 23.4 percent and Ford by 4.5 percent.

Audi, BMW and VW each suffered double-digit losses.

The same applies to the Opel sister brands Citroen, DS and Peugeot as well as Fiat.

They each lost a fifth or even significantly more.

Tesla deep in the red in May

Since January, Opel has recorded 13,057 new registrations, 16 percent fewer than a year ago.

The Federal Office puts the market share for the period at 5.7 percent;

6.3 percent are in the statistics for May.

Calculated for the first five months of this year, Volkswagen comes to 17.8 percent, Mercedes to 9.1 percent, for Audi and BMW there are 8.3 percent in the statistics.

For Tesla

the Federal Office reports a drop of a good 89 percent for May.

Since the beginning of the year, however, there has been an increase of almost two thirds.