By Gilles Castonguay
MILAN (Reuters) - Car makers reported tumbling sales across Asia and Europe Monday as the recession drove buyers from showrooms and drew a warning of more gloom for next year.
"I don't see it (2009) being very good," Fiat Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne told reporters at a Fiat plant in Italy. "It's a market that we continue to see being very, very weak. The European market is shrinking in the major countries."
Spanish car sales nearly halved, the biggest fall in nearly 16 years and the seventh straight month of decline, as credit restrictions and soaring unemployment took their toll.
Spain's government last week budgeted 800 million euros for its struggling car industry amid fears the sector could lose 50,000 jobs.
In France, headline sales at PSA fell more than 17 percent in November with the Peugeot brand slumping nearly 20 percent and Citroen off 14 percent. Overall French new car registrations were down 14 percent year-on-year and Belgian new cars sales fell 16.42 percent.
New car sales in Italy plunged 29.46 percent. Fiat's own sales fell by nearly the same rate at 28.6 percent.
Japan's overall car sales in November slid 18.2 percent from a year ago,, helping to push down platinum prices by 7 percent. Sales have fallen so much this year that car makers are cutting back on production, extending temporary plant closures and seeking help from governments to ride out the savage cutback in consumer spending.
The European Commission has pledged to help the car industry and included it in a 200 billion euro ($258.8 billion) economic stimulus package.
"The financial crisis and the weaker economy is now hitting the auto market with full force," said Bertil Molden, chief executive of Swedish auto industry body Bil Sweden.
The DJ Stoxx sector index was off 1.15 percent.
POSSIBLE VOLVO SALE
U.S. car makers have suffered the most in the downturn and been forced to take drastic measures with Ford saying Monday it was considering a sale of Swedish unit Volvo.
Swedish new car sales fell 36 percent in November to their lowest level since 1993. The government said it was talking to Saab and Volvo about loan guarantees but no specific sum had been discussed.
Along with Chrysler LLC, U.S. automakers are also looking for help from their own government.
But Ford's German operations would not need assistance in that country because sufficient financing was available within the group, according to Germany's Die Welt, citing the head of German operations Bernhard Mattes.
VDIK, the car importers association in Germany, said sales in Europe's biggest car market had fallen at a double digit rate in November. Detailed numbers are expected this week.
German Economy Minister said he was increasingly worried about the German car supplier market.
In South Korea, combined sales of domestic automakers, including Hyundai Motor Co, fell 8.6 percent.
(Reporting by Helen Massy-Beresford in Paris, Cheon Jong-woo and Kim Jung-hyun in Seoul, Mayumi Negishi in Tokyo, Niklas Pollard in Stockholm and Manuel Maria Ruiz in Madrid; editing by David Cowell)
