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Business buyers stay away from August sales

Ford Fiesta Q1 12 best seller
Fiesta: Private buyers are snapping up the baby Ford

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7 September 2012

Fiesta: Private buyers are snapping up the baby Ford

Author:

ROBIN ROBERTS

Business car buyers and fleets held off purchases in August, according to the latest registration figures from the SMMT.

It meant new car registrations in August have effectively flatlined, according to the figures, with only  private sales showing a lift which suggested a 0.1pc rise in registrations.

However, when incentivized dealer and manufacturer registrations are factored into the published figures, the true sales are lower than last year.

There was an indicated 0.1pc growth in sales, mostly to private buyers going for petrol cars as diesel fuel prices remain high.

With this month’s 62-plate cars coming onto the market August was going to be a bad month as it historically is but the effect of the Olympics and the holidays aggravated the slowdown and led to bigger incentives from car makers and dealers worried about their returns.

Last month the Ford Fiesta was the best seller, narrowly ahead of the Vauxhall Corsa, but the Focus completed the top three and they were the only ones sold to over 2,000 buyers.

Golf, Astra, Polo, Audi A3, Qashqai, Zafira and BMW 1 Series all followed to complete the top ten.

Private sales led the registrations with fleet and business both down while EV sales continued their slow increase in share and the alternative fuelled vehicles are currently 15pc above where they were 12 months ago.

The SMMT says it believes total registrations this year will touch 1.97 million and by the end of September the dealers anticipate selling 330,000 new models.

Ford led as usual with 13.62pc of registrations, Vauxhall 11.57pc and Volkswagen 10.19pc, but were all down on the August 2011 figures.  Land Rover soared 55pc up while Honda were up over 43pc.

August registrations were 59,083 cars compared to 58,879 12 months ago.

 

Keep up to date with news about business cars with our dedicated pages and make sure you look at our company car comparisons before you decided what to buy.

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Ralph Morton

Ralph Morton

Ralph Morton is an award-winning journalist and the founder of Business Car Manager (now renamed Business Motoring). Ralph writes extensively about the car and van leasing industry as well as wider fleet and company car issues. A former editor of What Car?, Ralph is a vastly experienced writer and editor and has been writing about the automotive sector for over 35 years.

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