German car-junking bonus bypasses premium brands

* Sales of micro cars more than doubles in March -KBA

* Deliveries of small cars rises 75 percent

* Market share for domestic brands falls to 53 pct

FRANKFURT, April 2 (Reuters) - Germans are thinking small when it comes to spending their windfall from junking old cars, leaving premium brands like Mercedes-Benz (DAIGn.DE) and BMW (BMWG.DE) out in the cold despite a market boom.

A sharp fall in demand from overseas is compounding premium carmakers' problem as makers of undersized vehicles rejoice.

Statistics compiled by the KBA motor vehicles agency show sales of the micro cars more than doubled in March, while deliveries of small cars advanced 75 percent and compact car turnover gained just over 8 percent.

The three segments combined made up two-thirds of the new car market last month.

Sales of the top-end vehicles fell by a quarter even as the overall market grew by 40 percent year on year. [ID:nL2696446]

Mercedes brand sales were down 7.6 percent, while BMW (BMWG.DE) sales slipped 1.1 percent even including its Mini brand. The 2,500 euro ($3,336) bonus in Germany for scrapping old cars represents less of a discount for high-price cars.

KBA said the market share for domestic brands slipped to 53 percent in March.

Italy's Fiat (FIA.MI), with a broad array of small cars, saw its brand's sales in Germany more than triple, as did sister brand Alfa Romeo and Japanese rival Suzuki (7269.T).

Premium German carmakers are having a hard time handling the collapse of demand in major foreign markets. Overall exports of German cars fell by a quarter in March and were down 38 percent in the first quarter, the VDA auto industry association said.

"Three out of four cars assembled in Germany are exported. Stabilising the global market is the top priority for the German automotive industry," VDA President Matthias Wissmann said.

However, orders from abroad slumped 26 percent year on year in March and plunged by nearly a third in the first quarter.

Faced with dismal markets, German carmakers have been scaling back production and cutting working hours.

Overall car output fell by a fifth a March and was down by a third in the first three months of the year.

For a table in German of individual brand sales click on: here,templateId=raw,property=publicationFile.pdf/n_03_09_pdf.pdf (Reporting by Alexander Huebner and Sabine Wollrab; Editing by Andrew Macdonald) ($1=.7493 Euro)