SUV is the new best-selling segment in Europe
For the first time in the history of European car sales, SUV leads the way after outselling the traditional subcompact and compact segments.
New car registrations for SUVs increased by 24%, with 3.2 million units sold throughout the continent, leaving the subcompact cars (22%) in second place, and the compacts (20.6%) segment in third.
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European new car registrations went up by 9.3% in 2015, driven by an SUV boom that contributed to a big part of the total growth.
The SUV growth was in part possible thanks to the outstanding results of the small SUVs, which contributed almost 38% of total SUV segment registrations in 2015.
Their volume increased by 38% over 2014, exceeding, for the first time, the one million unit mark at 1.2 million. Despite their growth, they were still behind the compact SUVs, which accounted for 40% of the total at 1.28 million units, with the Nissan Qashqai the segment leader for compact SUVs.
Small SUVs growth rate was also outperformed by the 42% increase posted by the mid-size SUVs, which totalled 470,400 units. The large SUVs came last with 243,000 units, up by 27% on 2014's results.
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SUV registrations grew in all of the 29 countries analysed, with the UK posting the highest volume increase from 501,200 units in 2014 to 630,400 in 2015.
The top 3 best-selling SUVs by segment in Europe 2015:
Small:
Compact:
Mid-size:
Large: