The reason for the slump is in large measure due to the reputational and market problems for Fiat and Opel, compared to Volkswagen, Europe's largest car maker which is doing better than most other European carmakers despite the crisis, says Wojciech Drzewiecki, head of Samar, a Polish car industry research firm. Volkswagen, helped by its Skoda brand produced in the neighbouring Czech Republic and its recent acquisition of Porsche, managed to stay essentially flat in European sales for the first eight months of this year, according to new figures from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association - this at a time when the overall European market declined 7.1%. However, Fiat saw its European sales tumble by 17%, due in large part to the steep fall in sales in Italy, its primary market, where new car sales fell by 20%. By contract, the German market, where Volkswagen is dominant, shrank by only 0.6% over from January to August.