Remove scrappage sales and Chevrolet are run away leaders

The headline figure of 157,149 new car registrations in July was 2.4 percent up on 2008. A modest but nevertheless welcome result given 15 previous months of decline, even though as a whole 2009 is still down 22.8 percent. But what would the figures look like if the scrappage naysayers had got their way and the incentive never introduced? Last month when we took a look at June’s top twenty figures with scrappage sales removed it was interesting to see Kia still doing well despite the scheme. Carrying out the same exercise with July’s figures makes even more interesting reading.

Hyundai, the undisputed “kings” of scrappage and top of the pile by some distance in July’s Car Makers Premier League actually drop out of the top twenty all together. Taking their place – and taking over the number one spot – is, surprisingly, Chevrolet who, along with Nissan and Mercedes has increased their figures from last year.

After that it’s all bad news with even Kia dropping 493 units from last July’s results. The total amount of new cars registered in the UK in July outside of the scrappage scheme was 124,419 down a shade under 19% on July 2008.

We suppose there are two ways of looking at this. The scrappage scheme is obviously doing its job by stimulating demand for new cars, albeit the less profitable smaller varieties but at what cost to the trade in the longer term? We can see that the underlying health of the market is far from robust and we may be setting ourselves up for an even bigger and more painful decline at the end of the scheme.

As with anything only time will tell.

Below is how the Car Makers Premier League for July looks with all the registrations made through the scrappage scheme removed.

Pos	Marque	July 2009	July 2008	Diff	% change
1		2093	1,314	779	59.3
2		5401	4,765	636	13.3
3		4777	4,663	114	2.4
4		6789	7,124	(335)	(4.7)
5		1842	1,952	(110)	(5.6)
6		2354	2,522	(168)	(6.7)
7		6995	8,134	(1139)	(14.0)
8		11438	13,346	(1908)	(14.3)
9		20883	25,301	(4418)	(17.5)
10		16357	20,777	(4420)	(21.3)
11		4266	5,450	(1184)	(21.7)
12		6782	8,677	(1895)	(21.8)
13		1760	2,253	(493)	(21.9)
14		1967	2,662	(695)	(26.1)
15		1869	2,552	(683)	(26.8)
16		4244	6,224	(1980)	(31.8)
17		2209	3,564	(1355)	(38.0)
18		3725	6,246	(2521)	(40.4)
19		4852	8,762	(3910)	(44.6)
20		2147	4,186	(2039)	(48.7)