May 2009: UK new car sales and trends analysis

The scrappage scheme was supposed to give the UK car market a massive boost, but latest figures out today show new car registrations are still down by more than a quarter.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) reports that new car registrations fell 24.8% in May 2009 to 134,858 units. However, this fall marks an improvement on earlier months of the year. To date, the UK new car market in 2009 is 27.9% smaller than last year – a significant shrinkage of some 289,598 cars.

SMMT chief executive Paul Everitt said: ‘While consumer confidence is improving, the UK motor industry is still facing a difficult economic climate. We have seen an encouraging start to the scrappage incentive scheme with 35,000 orders being placed since it was announced, although it will take time to feed into registration figures.’

Small car sales in good health

A decline in diesel car sales, from 44.8% in May 2008 to 44% in May 2009, reflects the shift to smaller cars, which tend to be petrol-engined.

In fact, the city car segment was the only segment to record a meaningful increase – with sales of minis up an astonishing 50.3%. Supermini sales were up too, with the Ford Fiesta being the month and year-to-date’s best seller.

See CAR’s analysis of the year-to-date UK new car registrations in our handy table below, comparing the first five months of 2009 with 2008. There are some astonishing falls from grace – Chrysler has seen sales collapse by 75.4% to shift just 857 cars in the first five months of the year. Mitsubishi (down 61.3%), Renault (down 57.2%) and Bentley (down 64.3%) also suffered heavy losses.

But in times of hardship, it’s often worth looking at the market share in a falling market. Ford has seen its market share rise to an impressive 17.3%, with Hyundai’s leaping to nearly 2%. Things aren’t looking so healthy for Renault and Mitsubishi though. Renault’s market share has dropped by about 2%, and Mitsubishi has seen its share almost halve in the first five months of 2009.

There’s other good news buried in the stats. Alfa Romeo sales are up by 8.7% this year, and Corvette saw a staggering fourfold increase in sales, albeit shifting just 30 cars.