Volkswagen sales drop

For the first time in nearly five years, Volkswagen Group sales fell last month, new global registration figures have revealed.

Its deliveries slipped to 853,200 cars in April, down 1.3 per cent on its April 2014 result.

The global figure was pulled back by slowing sales in China and Latin America and could serve to magnify the areas of disquiet that were at the centre of this month’s ferocious leadership tussle between Supervisory Board Chairman Ferdinand Piech and VW Group CEO Martin Winterkorn.

The Porsche family heir Piech and his one-time apprentice Winterkorn took on a life-and-death feel and provided weeks of industry drama in Germany after Piech told German media he was no longer close to Winterkorn.

He made clear that he wanted Winterkorn ousted because of concerns about Chinese and Latin American sales, plus shrinking profit margins and poor SUV strategy in the US.

While Winterkorn won the boardroom battle, the April results show he still has plenty of work left if he’s to win the war, especially as the Porsche family holding company (of which Piech is a 14 per cent shareholder) owns just over half of the Volkswagen Group.

A lot of the issues relate the core Volkswagen brand, which slid 4.8 per cent and soaks up 60 per cent of the 12-brand Group’s deliveries. Every brand in the Group bar Volkswagen has grown this year, with 3.34 million cars sold in the first four months of the year.

For the core brand, though, the fall was 2.2 per cent -- down to 1.98 million vehicles.

“While we felt tailwinds in Western Europe and North American and could increase group deliveries strongly in some place, South America and Eastern Europe remain challenging, especially due to the market development in Russia,” a statement from Volkswagen sales boss Christian Klingler said.

While Europe has traditionally dominated the Group’s sales, fully a third of Volkswagen models are now sold in China, leaving it exposed to the giant country’s economic variations.

Volkswagen admitted its Brazilian deliveries were down 26.7 per cent so far this year (to 200,400 vehicles) and up in China, but only by 0.2 per cent to 1.19 million.

While Volkswagen itself fell, Audi rose 5.2 per cent (to 591,100), even as its showrooms wait for the new A4 and Q7, while Porsche jumped 32 per cent (to 72,600) on the back of the Macan.

The ever-practical Skoda rose 6.1 per cent to 357,200 cars, while Seat lifted its volumes by 8.6 per cent to 138,400 in the first four months of 2015.