Germany's domestic car market remained sluggish in September, with official figures released Monday casting major doubts on the industry's full-year projections. The Federal Vehicles Office (KBA) in Flensburg said the 274,538 newly-registered private cars in September were down 3.7 per cent from the same month last year. With the September downturn, private car registrations for the first nine months, at just under 2.42 million, were down by 2.4 per cent from the same period of 2003, the KBA said. "Even with a strong final spurt in the last quarter, it appears that a full-year result of 3.2 million new private car registrations is unrealistic," the KBA said. The German Car Manufacturers Association VDA has targeted a figure of 3.24 million private car registrations for 2004. Total registrations of all kinds of vehicles in Germany totalled 311,097 in September, down 3.2 per cent from September 2003. At just above 2.83 million for the first nine months this year, total registrations were down by 1.9 per cent from the same 2003 period. The latest figures mean further sobering news for German car companies which are having to resort to costly price competition in the home market to try to entice buyers in the sluggish market.
