What are the European habits of buying foreign? (luxury, vehicle, Germany)
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We have a good sense of which import sells here, why and who buys them. I have very little sense of what's going on in Europe. For example, Japan has totally dominated the US car market and done it for a long time. First through imports then local manufacturing. At the same time, Europeans have seen one fail product after another in the US even though in their home countries they are respected. Peugeot, Fiat, Renault and many others were vanquished in the US by the likes of Toyota and Honda but remain in business in Europe. Why? And now we have the Koreans coming up. How's Sonata doing in Europe, for example? I doubt it is anything like here.
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The top three in order are VW, Ausi, and Skoda. The first US brand is Ford at #14, the first Japanese is Toyota at #28 followed by Nissan, Lexus and the Korean brands.
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My experience, having lived as an American in London, Munich, Amsterdam, Paris, and Madrid is that most people buy Euro (which includes Ford) when young but it all changes when they are a pensioner (retired). Then they buy Japanese (usually a Honda Jazz or some such thing) to get reliability for their fixed income. Every Euro car I've had has had some kind of problem.
The top three in order are VW, Ausi, and Skoda. The first US brand is Ford at #14, the first Japanese is Toyota at #28 followed by Nissan, Lexus and the Korean brands.
Kind of makes my point. People swear by the Japanese cars over here yet they are struggling in Europe. Is there some hidden tariff or trade protection to keep the Japanese out?
I wouldn't be surprised if it comes down to preferring interesting Euro design to preferring Japanese reliability for a vehicle that's, on average, driven 1/2 to 1/3 as many kilometers a year as a typical North American vehicle. As the saying goes: "In England 100 miles is a long distance; In America, 100 years is a long time ago."
Europe is not a country and when a German for example buys a Renault, then this car is considered foreign. It's not uncommon to buy foreign car brands, but the Japanese brands aren't doing that well. They were doing better 20 or 30 years ago.
Market share in the EU in the first half of 2016:
VW: 23.7%
PSA: 10.4%
Renault: 10.3%
Ford: 7.1% (Fords here in Europe aren't considered American, with the exception of the Ford Mustang)
FCA: 6.9%
Opel: 6.8% (owned by GM, but Opels aren't considered American)
BMW: 6.5%
Daimler: 5.9%
Toyota: 4.1%
Nissan: 3.7%
Hyundai: 3.2%
Kia: 2.9%
Volvo: 1.8%
Mazda: 1.5%
Jaguar Land Rover: 1.5%
Suzuki: 1.2%
Honda: 1.1%
Mitsubishi: 0.7%
Other Japanese: 0.2%
Europe, even within the Eurozone, is a lot of countries, cultures and economies. Germany is different than Italy and Italy is different than Romania. So, it would probably be more worthwhile to compare Germany, the UK, France to the US than try to lump the rest of them in. Furthermore, different countries have vastly different taxes and tariffs. Denmark is 180% taxation on vehicles.
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