While official figures showed the UK car market falling 21.2% in September, accusations some automakers had been registering large number of ‘demonstrators’ and offering big discounts in a bid to boost the numbers and hit bonus targets were rife at last week’s Paris motor show.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
New car sales last month fell to 330,295 units from 419,290 in September ’07 and were 7.5% down year-on-year.
Toyota Europe chief Thierry Dombreval alleged at the show that even the falling numbers were being kept artificially high through discount deals and so-called ‘pre-registering’ of vehicles.
He said one manufacturer was offering 50% discounts to UK fleet buyers. Dombreval insisted Toyota would not try to “buy” market share even though he predicted the company’s European sales will fall this year to 1.2m from 1.26m in 2007.
Another senior European sales director said the UK September market was as much as 34% down until the last couple of days of the month when “false sales” helped to massage the figures.
The Retail Motor Industry Federation said: “Evidence shows that dealers took a deliberate decision to curtail pre-registrations during September. Many dealers are looking to reduce stock holding of nearly new and used vehicles. It would not be in their interests to pre-register.
“To support this, we are aware of a number of manufacturers who have re-negotiated sales targets with their dealer networks in view of the difficult trading conditions.”
An SMMT spokesman said the UK new car industry is required to publish the number of pre-registered models by manufacturer on a monthly basis which it does on members’ behalf on its web site.
“The latest figures published (relating to August 2008 new car registrations) show that a mere 487 cars were pre-registered that (quiet retail) month – so hardly a large scale operation,” he said.
According to rules, manufacturers are required to report only those cars that have been pre-registered and kept for a period of less than three months before disposal – ie before being supplied to a final customer.
“Many consumers appreciate the significant savings they can make on pre-registered ‘nearly new’ cars from new car showrooms – and other outlets. The new car market now is increasingly ‘built to order’, not built for stock.
“Pre-registering cars is not illegal. It is done for a number of reasons including, but not exclusively, to use cars as dealer demonstrators.”
Ford of Britain chairman Roelent de Waard said the UK market was tough and, while his company’s sales were down 6% on last year at around 283,500 vehicles, market share was holding at 14%.
“We expect to hold our position as well,” he added. “With the launch of new Fiesta and new Ka we have the right cars at the right time.”
Phil Waring, sales vice president at Mazda Europe, said it was critical to maintain or even improve market share and not chase volume. Mazda UK’s market share in September was up to 2.8% from 2.2% earlier in the year, he said.
SMMT chief executive Paul Everitt said new car registrations had fallen for the fifth consecutive month, representing the most difficult economic conditions the industry has faced in 17 years.
He called for government action to restore consumer confidence and boost demand, suggesting the introduction of measures to boost demand for new fuel-efficient cars and the scrapping of plans for [retrospective] “unfair” increases in annual car tax.
