Trendy SUV-Crossovers outsell mainstream Small-Sector cars like Polo for the first time. When autoindustry visionaries gaze into their crystal balls to see what Europe's medium term car sales future will look like, they need look no further than recent car buying patterns in Germany, where trendy SUV-Crossovers are already outselling comparative fuel-sippers like VW's Polo, Opel's Corsa or Ford's Fiesta. With Germany's fuel pump prices at their lowest levels for three years, demand for 4WD vehicles has continued to climb. This trend has been gathering momentum since the early 2000s, recording above average gains ever since. Germany's 4WD segment, after expanding at well over twice the market rate so far this year, is virtually guaranteed to end 2015 in the manner it spent the past decade and a half, taking a forever growing slice of Germany's car sales pie. Three quarters through the year, the sales share going to all-wheel-drive vehicles, made up of both SUV-Crossovers and conventionally bodied cars, also rose to a new historic high of 16.9 per cent, up 1.1 percentage points on the same period last year. That reflects the fact that a growing proportion of the Crossovers now sold in Germany are of the simple 2WD type.
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