Combined earnings for Germany's Opel and Britain's Vauxhall, which both belong to the General Motors brand, remained in the red for the first three months of 2016 - but a $6-million (5.3-million-euro) loss is still the company's best result since the second quarter of 2011.

"We have come a lot closer to our target of breaking even for the full year," Opel CEO Karl-Thomas Neumann wrote on Thursday.

Nevertheless Mr. Neumann also warned against any "forgone conclusions" that his company would be back in the black by the year's end, due to what he termed the "difficult market environment and currency effects."

VW side effect

Opel's Mokka and newest edition Astra, which won European Car of the Year for 2016, have helped the company win back market share, now standing at 6.9 percent. The brand is also thought to have got a leg up from Volkswagen, as consumers turned away from the scandal-ridden brand, seeing its market share stagnate.

Meanwhile, US parent company General Motors reported that its profit more than doubled in the first three months of the year to ring in at $2 billion dollars.

GM's notably improved performance in Europe comes after cost cutting in the region. The company said that it was monitoring the Brexit debate closely, with CFO Chuck Stevens expressing concern as to whether Britain would vote to leave the EU. "Our biggest concern long-term is what that does to the commercial flows," Stevens said.

hch/hg (AFP, dpa)