Kia doing well even without scrappage

According to the SMMT (Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders) 29,796 vehicles have been registered so far under the scrappage Scheme since its start in the middle of May and the government backed incentive accounted for 9.7% of June’s new car registrations total with 17,014 units. SMMT chief executive, Paul Everitt is clearly delighted with the progress of the scheme “The scrappage incentive scheme is working well and has encouraged a lot more people back into showrooms. In the coming months, we will see an increase in the rate of deliveries and this will confirm further progress on the industry’s long road to recovery.” July will no doubt be even more interesting as we see further sales turn into registrations

But what if the people opposed to the scrappage incentive had won the argument? What would June’s new car registration figures look like? We thought it might be interesting to see how the top twenty manufactures in June’s Car Makers Premier League would have fared without the scheme.

Well it’s certainly good news for Kia, topping the list with a very creditable 18% increase on June 2008. Mercedes, Suzuki, Ford and Audi all do relatively well. Volvo is the only manufacturer in the top twenty missing from the SMMT scrappage figures and we assume this is because they were late with their figures as various press reports have Volvo themselves announcing scrappage sales of over 1,200 to date. Interestingly enough, if we were to include their figures they would drop out of the top 20 altogether with just over 1,500 units registered and a whopping 59% drop on last June. As it is we left them alone to enjoy mid table mediocrity at position 13.

It’s more bad news for Renault as removing their scrappage registrations sees them drop a further percentage point to a 73%, a decrease of 7,417 registrations on June 2008. Other big losers are Toyota and Mazda with 45% and 56% drops respectively.

So congratulations to Kia who are showing that, as with most things in business, it’s a numbers game and the margins may be small on their cars but if you shift enough units the smiles are big!

POS	Manufacturer	June 2008	June 2009	Diff	%
1		3080	3624	544	18
2		7174	7358	184	3
3		3164	3170	6	0
4		28657	27737	(920)	(3)
5		8167	7746	(421)	(5)
6		3954	3462	(492)	(12)
7		7230	6211	(1019)	(14)
8		5290	4416	(874)	(17)
9		6574	5487	(1087)	(17)
10		15448	12523	(2925)	(19)
11		2755	2223	(532)	(19)
12		12279	9194	(3085)	(25)
13		3661	2706	(955)	(26)
14		13639	9488	(4151)	(30)
15		5040	3400	(1640)	(33)
16		32056	20705	(11351)	(35)
17		7973	5032	(2941)	(37)
18		4374	2404	(1970)	(45)
19		9913	4408	(5505)	(56)
20		10132	2715	(7417)	(73)

Please note, the figures used in this table are generated by SMMT by aligning information submitted as a result of the scrappage incentive scheme and its own Motor Vehicle Registration Information System (MVRIS). Due to the timings involved in the scrappage scheme’s administrative process, there may be a short time delay on some vehicles appearing within this data. The figures are therefore subject to change.

Subscribe to Motor Trade Insider by Email