A report issued by the SMMT shows that UK car owners are hanging on to their cars for longer before replacing them. The finding appears to confirm the impact of economic recession as well as an underlying long-term improvement to vehicle quality.
If first-time car owners keep their cars for longer, replacement demand that feeds into the new car market will fall.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
The SMMT’s motorparc data shows that the average car in UK circulation is now 7.44 years old, up two months on a year ago. The data also shows that parc growth is slowing. The past decade saw UK car parc grow 9%, a slower rise than the previous decade’s 17%. In 2011, the total number of cars on UK roads grew 104,519 units (0.3%) to 31,362,716.
However, the SMMT also says that the tendency to hang on to cars for longer could be a false economy as the average new car is 20% more efficient than a typical seven year old car, saving the average motorist around GBP400 each year.
In the average car’s lifetime, it will have four owners, but there are 341 cars on UK roads with more than 20 registered keepers, and more than 5.3m cars over 12 years old.
The data comes from the SMMT’s largest ever annual Motorparc census that analyses full details including make, model, variant, colour, emissions and age of every car, van, truck, bus and coach on UK roads.
