New registrations by segment: Bestseller in January 2019

I ntotal The Federal Motor Transport Authority in Flensburg recorded 265,702 new car registrations in January 2019, which means at the beginning of the year a decrease of 1.4 percent compared to the same month last year. A detailed examination of the individual vehicle segments shows that the compact class, with a share of 21.2 percent in the reporting month, is ahead of SUVs with 20.4 percent and off-road vehicles with 10.1 percent. Adding SUVs and off-road vehicles, the off-roaders make up a large proportion of the newly registered cars in Germany at 30.5 percent.

Mini segment: Opel Adam only 5th place

And what about the individual segments? The Minis category saw the first change in leadership. Here, compared to December, the VW Up takes the lead. This pushes the Opel Adam into fifth place. Renault Twingo and Fiat 500 stay in second and third place.

Opel also has to give up a podium place in the small car segment. In the last month of 2018, the Opel Corsa was still on the bronze seat and in January the Ford Fiesta pushed past the Rüsselsheimer. The VW Polo is still ahead, followed by the Mini.

The compact class traditionally belongs to the VW Golf, and nothing will change in January 2019. In the ranks behind, the competition is fighting for the two places behind the Best seller from Wolfsburg. In January these are the Skoda Octavia instead of the BMW 1 Series in second place and the Opel Astra in third place, which replaces the Ford Focus.

The BMW 7 Series falls out of the luxury class segment

The upper middle class in Germany only has a registration share of 3.9 percent. Nevertheless, the segment is very volatile. If in the previous month the sequence was still called BMW 5 Series, Audi A6 and Mercedes E-Class, the tide turns in January and sees the Audi ahead of the Mercedes and the BMW.

A look at the luxury class also lets you recognize new front runners. In December, the Audi A7 did not even make it into the top 3, now it is right up there and pushes the CLS and Mercedes S-Class down one place each. The BMW 7 Series thus falls out of the top 3.

A BMW is also the victim of a VW triumphant advance. The VW T-Roc is new at the top of the SUV segment. As in December, the Mercedes GLC and the Ford Kuga are in second and third place. The December front-runner BMW X1 can only be seen in 5th place after the Ford Ecosport.

Sports car number 1: The E-Class Coupé

In the SUV category, there is the Reporting month no change at the top. Frontare the VW Tiguan and the BMW X3. Instead of the Volvo XC60, the new third is the Audi Q5. Now we come to the sports cars, which in Germany only have a registration share of 0.9 percent. As in the previous year, the E-Class Coupé is in first place, here the KBA follows the classification of the model as a sports car by the manufacturer. The original sports car Porsche 911 has to admit defeat to the Ford Mustang this month. The new number 1 in mini-vans is the Ford C-Max. He swaps places with the Peugeot 3008, the Mercedes B-Class is kicked out of the top 3 by the Renault Scénic. There are no changes in the positioning in the other segments.

Note: The registration statistics are the official data from the Federal Motor Transport Authority in Flensburg. The division into the respective classes is carried out by the manufacturer using a key number. The statistics can also show models that are not available on the German market or that are no longer built. This peculiarity can occur with the KBA statistics if e.g. foreign vehicles are registered for the first time in Germany or vehicles are given a new ID number.