Engineering news
Registrations of new cars fell by more than 17% in August, the second consecutive monthly drop, but sales are still expected to exceed last year’s total, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said.
Some 55,305 units were registered last month, down 17.5% on 2009, when sales were fuelled by the government’s car scrappage scheme. Experts have said that scrappage schemes across Europe will have “pulled forward” some sales that would otherwise have occurred this year.
The SMMT said the decline marked a second consecutive fall, a pattern expected to continue through to the end of the year. Total volumes, however, are still up 13.2% to date compared with last year, at more than 1.3 million. The SMMT full year forecast suggests 2010 registrations will finish at two million, up 1.2% on 2009.
“New car registrations were down 17.5% in August and conditions will remain challenging through the rest of the year," said Paul Everitt, SMMT chief executive. “The industry enjoyed a better than expected first half of the year and, despite the difficulties, SMMT is forecasting that new car registrations will close just ahead of 2009 figures.”
In the year to date, the supermini and lower medium segment markets have contributed the largest volume to the market’s growth, but they, along with the mini segment, recorded a sharp decline in August volumes. People carriers, dual-purpose sport utility vehicles, executive and luxury saloon segments have sustained their strong growth momentum, the SMMT said. Luxury car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover, for example, enjoyed a strong first half of the year.
The Ford Fiesta was the best selling model in August and in 2010 so far. Other winners were the Ford Focus, Vauxhall Astra and Corsa, and Nissan Qashqai, produced in Sunderland.
August typically only accounts for 3.3% of annual sales ahead of the plate change in September. Last August, more than 16,000 cars, or 25% of the market, was reportedly sold through the scrappage scheme.
The market for new ‘60’ plate cars is expected to decline by around 10% in September, from 367,929 units last year. The market is forecast to slow from the current annual running rate of 2.146 million units to 2.018 million units by the end of the year.
Over the first seven months of 2010 the market remains 13.2% above 2009 with private and fleet volumes up by a similar amount. In August, as in July, the fleet market continued to recover while private volumes fell away from the scrappage-fuelled levels of 2009.
Diesel-fuelled cars once again saw their market share reach a new high, up to 52.6% in August, in part reflecting the drop in petrol-fuelled car registrations.