After three months in which it didn't top the registration charts, the Wolfsburg bestseller is number one again. He leads a VW trio.
The last quarter of 2021 was very strange in terms of new registrations. Not only that the numbers were much lower than usual because of the Corona crisis and the resulting problems such as the massive lack of semiconductors and severely stagnant supply chains. No, in the last three months of last year the impossible actually happened: the VW Golf was not number one on the hit parade. But now, at the beginning of 2022, the bestseller has straightened the picture again. 8,146 new registrations mean that he has recaptured the top position, clearly and unequivocally.
The Volkswagen brand is also performing according to its own self-image: The Tiguan and the T-Roc, two other models from the VW universe, are in second and third place. There are only four new registrations between the two SUVs, which is an example of how things went for the Wolfsburg-based company in January: The Polo and its SUV offshoot T-Cross are already a very close race in the midfield, but tighter than the Touran and Caddy It couldn't have been at the end of the top 50: A single new registration was the deciding factor here (see table).
Crash for VW Up and Tesla Model 3
And how did the former Golf replacements fare in January? The T-Roc, front runner in October 2021, remained on the podium as mentioned. The November winner Opel Corsa just missed the podium with fourth place. The VW Up, which greeted from the top in December, experienced a strange crash: last month's top seller only ended in 16th place. Ouch!
But other upstarts of the past year were also badly hit at the beginning of 2022. So the electric car euphoria seems to have evaporated for the time being. For example, anyone who misses the Tesla Model 3, which was still second in December, will not find it in this top 50 list: with only 277 new registrations, the Californian has missed it by miles. The VW ID.3, which does not get beyond a three-digit registration number, has a similar experience. The Renault Zoe, in 2021 as a whole seventh in the new registration charts , also missed the class target this time. As a result, the top 50 in January 2022 will have to do without a purely electric series. This is also an unusual phenomenon.
Conclusion
The new registration statistics in January 2022 have something of "The Empire Strikes Back". We only see VW models on the podium, the imported brands – apart from those of the Volkswagen Group – hardly see any land and the purely electric series have been completely washed out of the top 50. But even that should only be a snapshot; The latter in particular should change as soon as something like normality returns to the German new car market.
