British Auto Market suffers dip in 2024. In August new car passenger sales have been 84,521 (-1.4%) with Year to Date figures at 1,2 million (+5.6%). BMW moved up 4 ranks to claim 2nd position (+32.6%) and moving closer to the leader Volkswagen.
Market Trend and Outlook
The UK’s GDP growth is expected to be 0.4% in 2024, before gradually improving to 1.0% in 2025 as the impact of previous monetary tightening diminishes. The economy has struggled in recent years under the pressures of economic shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic and Ukraine war.
Despite the positive economic outlook, the UK passenger car market has slowed down in August 20204, though year-on-year volume growth has remained modest.
New monthly car passenger sales were 84,521 (-1.4%) with Year to Date figures at 1,23 million (+5.6%).
Looking at brand ranking Year to Date, Volkswagen was still the leader with 103,306 sales (+5.9%).
BMW jumped 4 spots into the second place with 83,975 sales (+32.7%) while Audi ranked 3rd with 80,958 sales (-1.7%).
In fourth place Kia -up 1 spot- with 74,885 sales (+5.3%) followed by Ford -down 3 spots- with 66,610 (-21.9%), and Nissan -up 2 spots- with 65,623 units sold (+20.4%).
In seventh place Toyota -down 3 spots- with 62,417 (-13.8%) ahead of Mercedes -up 2 spots- with 60,618 (+14.4%), Hyundai with 57,775 (+6.3%) and in 10th place MG -up 1 spot- with 52,811 sales (+7.9%).
Looking at best-selling models, the leader was still the Ford Puma (+10.4%) followed by the Kia Sportage (+34.3%) and the Nissan Qashqai (+15.3%).
Medium-Term Market Trend
The decline of the British vehicles market was already in place since a couple of decades, with the relocation of several manufacturing activities in other low cost European countries, but the exit from the European Community has further accelerated the process, starting from the long discussions about BREXIT.
Indeed the market reached a record level in 2016 (2.6 million annual sales) and then started to decline. The pandemic in 2020 further accelerated the process pushing the industry down to 1.6 million and rather than recovering, it seems that the market direction is still down.
In the following two years, in fact, the British market didn’t perform quite well. In 2021 volume remained relatively flat, with sales rising merely 0.7% and in 2022 the market dropped further, losing 1.6%.
Indeed, the effects of current global threats, including record inflation rate, increased fuel price, political instability, transition to electrification, raw materials shortage, are emphasized in UK by the economic effects of BREXIT.
In 2023 the market finally reported a relevant increase with sales improved 17% at 1.9 million.
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales for the top 40 Brands and top 10 Manufacturers Groups and the top 10 models.
