http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSGEE5B01HP20091201

Stocks

* French Nov car sales up 48.4 pct * Spanish Nov car sales up 37.3 pct

* Italian Nov car sales up 31.25 pct - transport ministry (Updates with Italy car sales details)

By Helen Massy-Beresford and Stephen Jewkes

PARIS/MILAN, Dec 1 (Reuters) - European showrooms were busier in November but sales were flattered by last year's poor figures and auto makers fretted that the expiry of incentive schemes heralded an uncertain market in 2010.

Governments handed out cash incentives to drivers to trade in old cars for new but the schemes are winding down - Germany's has already finished -- and manufacturers are worried about a second sales dip.

"The basis of comparison last year was ultra-weak, so we can expect that November and December too should be ultra-strong months across Europe," said Societe Generale analayst Eric-Alain Michelis.

In France, car sales rose 48.4 percent in November and 7.6 percent in the first 11 months, carmakers' association the CCFA said.

"November 2008 was the low point of the cycle," CCFA President Xavier Fels told a news conference.

"The question of the low basis of comparison is very important," Fels added, referring to the last quarter of 2008, when carmakers slashed production as demand nosedived.

Nevertheless, "compared with 2007, the results were not as bad as all that," Fels said, adding that for the past four months the CCFA had been noticing a confirmed recovery.

Italy's Transport Ministry said new car registrations rose 31.25 percent to 182,976 units in November. [ID:nMAT012197]

"New car sales in November...confirm the importance of incentives, which besides improving the quality of vehicles on the road are a support for a market that otherwise would have recorded strongly negative numbers with dramatic consequences for the entire automotive sector," Gianni Filipponi, director general of Italy's foreign automakers association UNRAE, said in a statement.

Promotor, an industry think-tank, said the imminent end to incentives in Italy had helped boost the market.

"If, as seems probable, December follows the November trend, 2009 could post new sale volumes equal to or slightly above those of 2008," it said in a statement. Sales last year were 2.16 million units.

ANFIA, Italy's national automotive industry association, said orders taken in November totalled 204,000, up 44 percent from November 2008.

In Spain, which introduced its scrapping incentive scheme in May, car sales rose 37.3 percent in November. [ID:nMDT008829]