New-car registrations in dropped sharply in August in France, Italy and Spain as government incentives to buy new vehicles were slowly phased out or ended altogether.
In France, registrations, which mirror car sales, fell 9.8% compared with a year earlier, as the bonus that buyers of new cars received from scrapping vehicles that are at least 10 years old was reduced to 500 ($633.65) from 700 on July 1. The payments will end completely Dec. 31. When stripping out the effect of an extra working day this August, French new-car registrations were down 14%, the French car manufacturers' association...
