VW Golf reclaims the top spot

The VW Golf has re-claimed its crown as Europe's best-selling car, while Volkswagen remains the best-selling brand, according to Jato Dynamics, the world's leading provider of automotive data and intelligence.

The organisation's monthly European new car market analysis for April, shows Ford has kept up the pressure on its German rival, with the new Fiesta continuing to increase its sales across Europe, up 26.7 per cent year-to-date and 59.2 per cent for April.

Fiesta has sold especially well in the 'big 5' European new car markets (Germany, the UK, France, Italy and Spain), all of which have now also announced scrappage schemes, incentivising consumers towards new, smaller cars.

Small cars dominate the top 10 and have managed to increase sales year-to-date over the same period in 2008 in an otherwise difficult market.

The VW Polo and Fiat Panda were up 17.3 per cent and 56.8 per cent respectively, in April.

This small car success is in marked contrast to the overall European new car market, which dropped by 12.5 per cent (175,548 units) in April 2009 compared to April 2008, to a monthly total of 1,233,710 units.

This translates to a year-to-date fall of 15.5 per cent (or 853,772 units) versus the same period last year, with total sales of 4,647,468.

In a further sign of the impact of changing consumer tastes and targeted incentives, all of the top 10 best-selling models in Europe are now B or C segment cars, accounting for 1,158,651 sales year-to-date between them, or 24.9 per cent of the total European market.