French new-car registrations surge 14% In February

Dow Jones Newswires (Paris) -Automobile sales in France in February surged 14% year-on-year as orders remained strong, buoyed by discounting, commercial fleet renewals and deliveries of cars ordered in December before government incentives expired.

The French automobile manufacturers association, known by the French-language acronym CCFA, Tuesday said new-car registrations rose to 204,486 passenger cars last month. Registrations rose 8.2% in January for the same reasons.

A senior CCFA official told Dow Jones Newswires car registration data will remain strong at least through March, although given the high volume of cars sold in the second half of last year there should be a weaker year-on-year sales trend in the last six months of 2011.

CCFA's director of communications Francois Roudier said in a telephone interview that this year had been expected to be strong. But French car manufacturer order books have been stronger than predicted. Orders also have been helped by pent-up commercial fleet renewals as the economy and business prospects improve.

Roudier revised expectations for French car sales this year to more than 2 million units from less than 2 million units seen a month ago. The revised figure still is below the bumper automotive year in 2010, when 2.25 million vehicles were sold.

France's biggest and Europe's second-largest automaker PSA Peugeot-Citroen SA (UG.FR) said the outlook for the European automobile market was slightly better than previously expected.

"We're starting the year more strongly than we expected," said Jean-Marc Gales, the head of the company's two brands."We haven't seen the drop in orders in France that we expected" following the withdrawal of a government scrapping incentive at the end of last year."We can't rule out a pleasant surprise" in terms of sales for the full year, Gales told reporters at the Geneva international auto show.

The CCFA said PSA's French registrations jumped 11% last month, with the Peugeot brand alone boosting sales 12% on the year, with those of Citroen up 10%.

French market chief at the country's No. 2 automaker Renault SA (RNO.FR), Bernard Cambier, said in a statement that despite supply constraints, the company's French business in the first months of this year was on track to meet the 2011 sales objective of a market share similar to that of last year. Cambier said the group's order book for passenger cars and light-commercial vehicles were brimming.

Renault pushed up group sales in France 14% last month from a year earlier, with those under the Renault brand alone up 18%. Renault's Dacia Romanian-based budget car unit saw French registrations drop 8.9%, hurt by supply the constraints. A Renault spokeswoman said the company overall was prevented from delivering some cars because of difficulties in obtaining parts. The models affected include the Megane, Clio and Dacia Duster, she said, although she declined to identify the supplier or suppliers."We are helping them solve the problem," she said.

Another positive signal from the market was the 14% rise in light-commercial vehicle sales in France last month after softness last year and the year before."LCVs are doing well and that shows the economy is performing," Roudier said. In the first two months of this year, light-vehicle sales were up 11%, the CCFA data show.

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