French market has broken down...

The numbers are in and they're not pretty: The new car market in France declined by 13.9% in 2012, marking its lowest year since 1996.  1,898,872 new cars were sold from January 1st to December 31st of last year. The market went below the 2 millions cars sold, last time it happened was 16 years ago!
These figures go with the weak results of French manufacturers as Renault or PSA Peugeot-Citroen 
that had to fire many of their employees in different manufactures, as the sadly known at Aulnay-Sous-Bois, were 8000 employees have been fired.

This decrease can be explained by the fact that households have also seen their revenues decrease, purchasing a new car is not in their priority at the very moment, but, nevertheless, also by the fact that companies can be afraid of renewing their automobile park, in this moment of crisis.
Some others will explain this decrease in sales as a result of the government that is right now seen as doing an "anti-car policy": circulation restricted within the city center, more and more radars, fines going up from 17euros to 35 euros etc. So the weather is not the right time to purchase a new car, because of the crisis, but also because of the general atmosphere in France.

As we see in the figures, French manufacturers still get most of the market share (more than 50%).
But the number of registered cars by PSA has been divided by 17.5% compared to 2011! And Renault by 22.1%!

This crisis is not only in France, these figures are quite the same all over the world, and for all manufacturers, sales made by Fiat, Ford and Opel also decrease in France and abroad.
But it seems that some segment don't really what the word "crisis" means... Indeed, Korean brands and luxury brands seem to be alright in this crisis. Audi, Mercedes, BMW don't see any problem in their sales! They even make historic sales (c.f: BMW in 2012) and give thousands dollars bonuses to their employees. Rolls-Royce is even more provocative by increasing it sales by +10%...
On the other hand there are, even if the sales in volume are pretty low, Korean brands that are also feeling confortable: +42.2% for Hyundai, +18.1% for Kia. How can they reach such sales in this permanent crisis? The answer can be due to lower price and guarantee that lasts longer (7 years for Kia!)