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Author: Robert Lea
Source: The Times
Publication Date: 4th March 2010
With less than four weeks to go to the end of "scrappage" — the Government's subsidy scheme to save the motor retail industry — the question now is: what happens after the end of March.
Car salesmen are buoyant as they generally are in March. This month is the first of the bi-annual new registration plates and this year showrooms are getting the extra boost of the £2,000 scrappage handouts and the added psychological enhancement that those thinking of trading in their old banger now know just have days left in which to make that decision.
February is traditionally a pig of a period on the forecourt but the 26 per cent rise in new car registrations last month shows the effect that scrappage is having in keeping motor retailers peddling their wares with the minimal need to sharpen their patter.
And while the usual big sellers in the British market, Ford, Vauxhall and Volkswagen are happily seeing their Fiestas, Astras and Golfs rolling off the ramp at a healthy rate, the real stars of the scrappage scheme have been the South Koreans.
In fact, in the scrappage segment alone, Ford the long time big beast of the British motor market has been outsold by Hyundai and its i10. While Ford has sold more than 36,000 cars to scrappage customers over the last three months Hyundai has sold nearly 39,000.
And Kia with its Picanto has been the third biggest beneficiary of scrappage, with its quarterly sales of more than 26,000 beating VW, Fiat and its scrappage friendly Nuova Cinquecento, Vauxhall and Toyota.
Those expecting Toyota sales to implode in January because of the well-publicised accelerator pedal problems across seven models and braking problems on the Prius hybrid, may be surprised by a total February sales ledger of 3,439 cars. That is a rise of 5.5 per cent on a year ago — when UK motor retailing was in its darkest days — but compared with an industry increase of more than a quarter that shows that the Japanese giant is losing momentum and market share.
Despite a sharp increase in sales in January and February and expected to run through to March, the industry is still forecasting sales down for the year from the near-two million sold in 2009. With the end of scrappage that suggests those car salesmen will be working on their sales pitches a way lot harder from 1 April.
Added to the database on 8th March 2010
Keywords: scrappage car