French car sales drop 19.2% in November

French new car sales plunged by 19.2 percent in November on a monthly basis and by 13.8 percent in the first 11 months of the year, data from the French automobile manufacturers association CCFA showed on Monday. The CCFA said it expected French new car sales to be down by about 14 percent for 2012 as a whole. In November a total of 144,694 new cars were registered in France, the association said in a statement. French car makers were among those that suffered the biggest drops, with sales by PSA Peugeot Citroen, the second-biggest European auto manufacturer, down by 22.9 percent, and those by the Renault group posting a plunge of 33.5 percent. Foreign brands fared somewhat better, with a only a 7.9 percent decline overall. South Korea's Hundayai-Kia posted a 20.5-percent gain in sales, followed by Daimler, which owns Mercedes-Benz and Smart, with a 13.8 percent increase.