Which Car Brands Could Disappear From Europe in the Next Ten Years?

If you grew up in the late 1980s or the 1990s, there’s a good chance that at least one summer holiday stayed with you as the sound of a particular engine and the smell of cloth seats in a Peugeot, Ford or Opel. For us it was a Kadett. I remember the long family drives to the sea with the windows down, and the solid feel of the rear bench as the kilometres added up.

Opel was an institution in those years, and a Kadett in the driveway said that an ordinary person had done well. The lightning bolt travelled with football too, on the shirts of the AC Milan of Albertini and Maldini and the Bayern of Effenberg and Kahn.

These days the lightning bolt turns up far less often when I drive through town. Opel registered close to 400,000 cars in Europe in 2025. That is a far cry from 1999, when GM Europe, whose cars were mostly Opels and Vauxhalls, delivered close to 2 million vehicles, and Opel is only one of the old names under pressure. In September Volkswagen announced a Group-wide cut of about 50,000 positions and said it could not currently secure future production for four German plants for 2031 to 2034. The cost of electric platforms and emission targets that fine every gram over the limit have left many of the brands we grew up with asking whether their factories will see the next decade.

The question I keep coming back to is who will still be here in ten years. I went through the registration numbers and the company reports to see which of these names look safe and which could disappear from European roads by 2036.

Most lists of doomed car brands start with Seat because of one leaked document, and the numbers say the Spanish brand is only the most visible case. Lancia sold roughly 59,000 cars across Europe in 2019 (counted together with Chrysler) and less than 12,000 in 2025, a massive fall of 80.1%. Electrification is the turning point for most of the brands in this article, because these days a brand usually disappears when its parent company works out that it can’t pay for a separate electric line-up for every badge it owns. My bet is that Seat and Lancia lose their separate identities and that DS probably follows, while Opel and Alfa Romeo might survive in a different form.

How I Compared the Brands

For the sales figures I used ACEA, the European carmakers’ association, which counts registrations in the EU, the UK and the EFTA countries (Norway, Switzerland and Iceland). I took them from the tables on best-selling-cars.com, which reproduce ACEA’s brand rankings. These numbers cover every powertrain, so petrol, hybrid and electric are all in them. ACEA doesn’t split brand totals by powertrain, which is why the all-electric brands further down get their own figures from company reports.

Every brand is compared against 2019, the last full year before the pandemic, so all rows share one baseline. The UK was still in the EU that year, so the 2019 figures cover the same countries as today’s. Lancia is reported together with Chrysler in these tables.

In 2019 Cupra was still counted as part of Seat. Seat and Cupra together registered 513,360 cars in 2025, 1.2% more than Seat alone in 2019.

Source: ACEA registrations (EU, UK and EFTA, all powertrains) as published by best-selling-cars.com for 2019 and 2025; percentage changes are my own calculation.

Three rows in that table don’t mean what they seem to. Seat’s fall is partly Cupra leaving the brand, as the footnote says. Alfa Romeo grew, but its first half of 2026 fell 20.4% to 26,370 cars, so the gain didn’t last. Jaguar’s collapse is deliberate, which I’ll come back to.

Seat Is Not Officially Dead, but I’d Plan as if It Were

The Seat story broke in September, when the German business magazine WirtschaftsWoche reported on a confidential Volkswagen Group paper. It said the Spanish brand would be phased out by 2029 and its resources moved to Cupra. Volkswagen said no final decision had been taken, but where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Two more signals suggest this brand is at the end of its road. Volkswagen has announced that it is cutting its model range by half by 2035, and no electric Seat is planned. Additionally, Seat’s interim CEO Markus Haupt said in 2025 that it was impossible to make money with an electric car built by Seat.

Volkswagen also stressed that Seat S.A., the Spanish company that runs the Martorell factory, would continue either way. The plant already builds the Cupra Raval and the Volkswagen ID.Polo, so the capacity freed up by Seat’s exit can simply be shared among the group’s other brands.

Opel Is Smaller Than It Was but Hard to Replace

Under General Motors, Opel reached its peak in 1999, when GM Europe delivered a record 1,979,000 vehicles. The downhill started around the turn of the century, and the decline was already significant by 2007, when Opel and Vauxhall sold 1,630,830 cars and vans. By 2023 sales were down to about 570,000 vehicles, roughly a third of the 2007 level.

On ACEA’s narrower basis, which counts passenger cars only in the EU, the UK and the EFTA countries, Opel registered 815,683 cars in 2019 and 399,782 in 2025, Vauxhall included, a fall of 51.0%. The first half of 2026 brought a recovery to 228,488 registrations, up 11.4% on a year earlier, which put Opel between Peugeot with 345,314 and Citroën with 210,268.

Stellantis still needs Opel. It made up around 21% of the group’s European sales in 2025, with Germany as its largest market. In its FaSTLAne 2030 plan of May this year, Stellantis classes Opel as a regional brand, which means it sees Opel purely as a product for Europe. Even if Opel survives the constant reshuffling inside the group, further falls in sales in an ever more competitive Europe leave little room for optimism.

Opel has no electric-only platform, which is another source of its problems. The solution was found in China, where Stellantis bought about 21% of Leapmotor. In April 2026 Stellantis was reported to be in advanced talks to develop an Opel electric SUV and had been studying Leapmotor technology for the next Mokka, with Leapmotor supplying key technology and electrical components while Opel would keep its styling, brand and dealer network. If future electric Opels use Leapmotor architecture and software, the cars could stay German in badge only, while the engineering decisions are made in China. That also bears on the delayed next-generation Corsa, which I covered in my piece on the car. I expect Opel to be around in the next decade, but only as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Lancia, DS, Alfa Romeo and Fiat Face Four Different Futures

Stellantis says it has no plan to close any brand, but its priorities are clear. The plan puts Fiat, Peugeot, Jeep and Ram first. Fiat is the odd one out in my table, because its registrations fell 58.9% between 2019 and 2025 yet recovered to 193,898 in the first half of 2026, up 28.7%. Fiat is a brand with a bad stretch behind it and an assigned role, so I’d expect it to stay.

Lancia and DS are the ones I’d worry about. Lancia registered less than 7,000 cars in the first half of this year (still combined with Chrysler), and all eyes are on the new Gamma, which is due to go on official sale this autumn. DS registered 13,793 cars in the same period, down 19.4%. Both are small premium brands competing with the group’s own Citroën, Peugeot and Alfa Romeo dealers for the same customers. Xavier Chardon, who runs Citroën, has also been named head of DS, which reads to me as a first step toward turning DS into a luxury trim level of Citroën. ItalPassion puts 2028 as the year of truth for both, and I’d go with that.

Alfa Romeo is the hardest to call. The Junior, its small electric and hybrid SUV, lifted registrations close to 60,000 in 2025 (Alfa’s own figures put worldwide sales up 20.1%), but the first half of 2026 fell 20.4%. Alfa reported 60,000 Junior orders by March 2026, yet there are redundancies at the Tychy plant in Poland that builds it, linked to a forecast fall in demand. The Tonale’s replacement isn’t expected before late 2027 and a new Giulietta may not arrive until 2029. Reuters also reported preliminary talks about building an Alfa Romeo on the same Leapmotor architecture at Zaragoza. I’d keep Alfa Romeo on the survivors’ list, because a premium badge can carry higher prices than Opel or Fiat can, but I’d expect it to share more with the rest of the group every year.

Maserati sits apart. Its worldwide deliveries were about 11,300 in 2024 and it posted an adjusted operating loss of €260 million that year, against a profit of €141 million in 2023. In March 2025 it cancelled the electric MC20 Folgore because of insufficient demand. Stellantis has said it has no intention of selling the brand, though CEO Antonio Filosa told an Italian parliamentary hearing in June 2026 that the group is in talks with two unnamed potential partners who would bring technology and development expertise, and a product plan is due by the end of 2026. Luxury brands don’t need volume, but they do need money to develop electric cars.

Polestar and the Geely Family

Polestar is Geely’s electric-only brand, and it targets the same buyers as other brands in the group, such as Volvo and Zeekr, so Geely is partly competing with itself. In 2025 it delivered 60,119 cars and its revenue was €2.73 billion. Revenue is only what comes in, though. After the cost of building and selling the cars, development, financing and about €0.94 billion of non-cash write-downs, mainly on the Polestar 3, the company ended the year with a net loss of €2.10 billion. Divided by deliveries, that is a loss of roughly €35,000 on every car sold (my own arithmetic, write-downs included).

Sales fell in 2024 and recovered strongly in 2025, but the first half of 2026 shows that the recovery has stalled.

In February 2024 Volvo Cars said it would stop funding Polestar and cut its stake to 18% from about 48%, leaving Geely to carry the financing. Geely has since provided fresh loans and equity, with Volvo joining some of the rescues, and after its shares fell below Nasdaq’s minimum price it carried out a 30-for-1 reverse share split.

Polestar survived as a brand because Geely keeps writing the cheques, but the question is for how much longer. What I’d doubt is whether it survives as a listed company, since Geely and Volvo already hold nearly all the shares and could take it private. The Polestar 7, planned for 2028, is meant to be the first Polestar built in Europe, at Volvo’s plant in Slovakia. The group is also putting spare European capacity to use for other brands, as in the case of Geely building its own cars at Volvo’s European plants from 2028.

Geely sells many brands in Europe, including Volvo, Polestar, Zeekr, Lynk & Co, Smart and Lotus, and it has started cutting overlap. Zeekr took over Lynk & Co in early 2025, and Volvo is set to become Lynk & Co’s exclusive European distributor from January 2027, using its own dealer network. I’d expect the next merger or closure to come from the two weakest sellers in the group, which are Smart and Lotus.

Volvo is ACEA data (EU, UK and EFTA). Polestar is Inovev’s count for 30 European countries, with 2024 derived from the stated growth rate. Smart and Lotus come from Inovev and the company’s own filing, so the scopes differ and the rows are not strictly comparable.

Lotus delivered 716 cars in Europe in the first half of 2026, down 17%. Smart is owned 50-50 by Mercedes and Geely, and the sales of its #1, #3 and #5 fell far short of expectations in both China and Europe. A new small #2 is due this autumn. If it doesn’t sell, I’d expect Mercedes to step aside and Smart to become a Geely-only badge, but I wouldn’t bet on it disappearing, because Geely has no reason to waste a name it already owns in Europe.

For Chinese brands that sell under their own name on the continent, the picture is mixed. MG, owned by SAIC (China’s largest state carmaker), is doing great actually. It registered more than 300,000 cars in Europe in 2025, up almost 30%. Smaller names such as Nio have been closing sites. The company registered three cars in Germany in May 2026 and 12 in the first five months, down almost 89% on the same period of 2025. I already argued that Nio Is Dead in Europe, so you can read that piece if you want a deeper analysis. I covered the other Chinese brands in the wider list in my look at which Chinese EV brands will stay here.

Bugatti Shows What a Good Exit Looks Like

Bugatti is a different case, because its problem was its owner’s need for cash. When Porsche set up the Bugatti Rimac joint venture in 2021, Rimac Group (the Croatian company founded by Mate Rimac) held 55% and Porsche 45%, and Porsche also owned about 21% of Rimac Group itself. In April this year Porsche agreed to sell both holdings to an investor group led by the US firm HOF Capital, and the deal closed on 9 September 2026 for around €1 billion. Mate Rimac now also runs Bugatti as chief executive.

I think this was the right call, and the reasoning is simple. Volkswagen is cutting costs hard, and Porsche needed cash after weak sales in China. A Bugatti owned by someone who builds electric hypercars (the Nevera) and who wants the brand has a better chance of surviving a downturn than a Bugatti inside a group looking for cash.

Brands You Might Not Have Considered

Jaguar is the strangest case on the list. Its European registrations dropped from 22,623 in 2024 to 2,846 in 2025 because Jaguar Land Rover, the British group that owns it, essentially halted car production while it rebuilds the range around electric cars. The first model is a four-door electric GT, priced from €164,700 in Germany and £129.950 in the United Kingdom. The brand effectively vanished on purpose, and the gamble is whether buyers come back after a gap of that size.

Mitsubishi announced a withdrawal from Europe in 2020, then carried on with models supplied by Renault (its Colt and ASX are Renault’s Clio and Captur with a different badge). Its European registrations fell 68.5% between 2019 and 2025, so it already behaves like a badge on partner cars. Subaru is a quieter case. Subaru Deutschland told that it will stop selling new combustion-engine cars in Europe by the end of 2027, citing EU fleet CO2 limits and driver-assistance rules that are too costly for a small manufacturer. The CO2 limit is 93.6 g/km for a manufacturer’s fleet average from 2025 to 2029 and 49.5 g/km from 2030, and each gram over the target costs €95 per car registered. Since 2025 the Commission assesses 2025 to 2027 as a three-year average and lets manufacturers pool their fleets, so the pressure is real. From 2028 it keeps three electric cars, the Uncharted, Solterra and E-Outback, all based on Toyota models. I’d not call that a closure, but it is a brand left with three electric cars built on Toyota’s technology, so Subaru has a similar destiny to Opel: it will stay only as a badge on someone else’s car.

For all of you who enjoy carving through corners in your Focus, I’m sorry to say that Ford also fits the list, even if no forecast says so. Its car registrations in Europe fell from 965,070 in 2019 to 426,459 in 2025, a drop of 55.8%, although it has announced seven new models by 2029. Two of them will be EVs on Renault’s small-car platform, so Ford won’t be developing that technology itself. With that outlook, its market share will most likely keep falling. Ford Pro, its van business, is the main profit driver in Europe, so I’d expect Ford to stay well beyond 2036 even if its passenger cars continue to shrink.

Conclusion

My ranking by likelihood of vanishing from Europe as a separate name by 2036 is Seat first, then Lancia and DS, then Smart and Mitsubishi, with Alfa Romeo and Polestar further back. Opel and Fiat I’d expect to see in 2036. The wider rule is that a brand needs either volume or a rich owner, and the ones in trouble have neither. By 2036 I expect the market to split into three groups: a few large groups such as Volkswagen and Stellantis with far fewer badges, Chinese groups such as BYD and Geely building more of their cars in Europe, and profitable luxury specialists such as Ferrari. The brands in the middle, with no clear reason to exist beside a sister badge, have the least room.

Featured Image: Stellantis Media