Sales of new cars in Germany plunged in September, official data showed Tuesday, as updated EU emissions tests turned into a bottleneck for many manufacturers, reports AFP from Frankfurt Am Main.

New registrations were down 30.5 per cent year-on-year last month, at 200,134 units, the KBA transport authority said.

But the September slump comes after a surge in August, as carmakers scrambled to bring older models onto the road before

the new testing regime, known as WLTP, came into force.

Introduced in the wake of Volkswagen’s “dieselgate” scandal, in which millions of diesel-fuelled cars worldwide were fitted with software to cheat lab-based tests, the new scheme aims to better reflect emissions in real on-road driving. The disruption led to some upsets in the monthly figures.