Britain bucks trend as EU car sales continue to fall German car sales also fell 3.5pc to 259,846 in November, while sales in France fell by almost 20pc. "The key here is not how bad 2012 is but whether there can be a realistic hope that 2013 will improve," Erich Hauser at Credit Suisse told Bloomberg. We see little reason to believe that EU volumes will grow next year, which means that the spread between EU-focused and export-oriented original equipment manufacturers will only continue to widen. In the EU, only Ireland, Estonia and Hungary posted stronger gains than Britain, with sales tup by 13.5pc, 14.3pc and 14.7pc respectively. Iceland, Norway and Switzerland, all non-EU members, also posted gains. Data for November show that German manufacturer Volkswagen was the most popular car maker, with almost 125,000 new cars driven out of European forecourts last month. Ford and Vauxhall were a distant second and third. Britain's most popular car is the Ford Focus, with 7,495 registrations in November.