Tuesday, 31. May 2011
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April saw an increase in the sale of premium cars such as BMW and Audi. Whilst new car sales suffered during the month the premium brands all saw growth. The companies that showed growth included Mercedes, Audi, Lexus, BMW and Saab. Jaguar was the only make to suffer with sales down 60%. BMW even got into the top 10 car sales with its 3 Read more »
Tuesday, 17. May 2011
If you thought you were going to get a great deal on a Mercedes or a BMW you can pretty much forget it! Sales for both German manufacturers were up by more than 30% at the beginning of the year. Whilst most of this increase was into fleet buyers it has meant that the crazy deals that we saw in 2007/8 have not had to be repeated to increase sales. Read more »
Wednesday, 29. December 2010
This year has been a bit of a struggle for many industry sectors but not so much for the motor industry. Following the scrappage scheme it was expected that the motor industry would contract and dealerships close, something I personally didn’t think would happen. In anticipation of a potential downturn the manufacturers started to scale down production in 2008/9, some would say too far, as virtually every new car drifted out to long delivery lead times as demand remained relatively high. This Read more »
Thursday, 8. July 2010
What a bloody surprise! After hiking up their prices last year, no less than 4 times, which coincidentally coincided with the £1,000 manufacturer’s scrappage scheme contribution, Ford are now dropping their list prices by between 6% and 15% across their smaller cars from August, after all the pipeline scrappage orders have totally washed out of the system. No wonder the biggest benefactors were the Read more »
Thursday, 22. April 2010
Sales of new cars surged by 19% last month over sales for March last year according to latest figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). It sounds like a large increase but the sales last year were abysmal but hey we’ll take any glint of light that indicates things are moving in the right direction. Having said that, the sales in March were the highest monthly sales for 2 years, so it’s Read more »
Tuesday, 5. January 2010
 Whilst fleet sales were down last year retail sales were up as a result of the scrappage scheme and dealers that expected to make losses ended up making profits. This was the result of what could only be described as a total con trick. Retail buyers were convinced that giving up their old car to benefit from a £2,000 bonus from the Government and manufacturers was a good idea but stories were exchanged throughout the Read more »
Friday, 3. October 2008
Whilst there appears to be a great deal of doom and gloom about, the latest new car sale figures issued by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) to the end of June shows a modest drop of just 1.6% over the same period in 2007. A lot of that was due to the sharp action of the manufacturers to discount cars into Read more »