UK's top 10 best-selling cars 2023
While on these pages, we regularly wax lyrical about high-revving V12s, track-ready Barchettas and crazy horsepower EVs; we can't ignore the more mundane machines that day in day out do the hard graft while your treasured sportscar patiently awaits its weekend blast. Here you'll find the UK's top ten cars – not based on our judgement but on good old-fashioned sales figures from last year. Here are the UK's ten best-selling cars.
10. Vauxhall Mokka
The Vauxhall Mokka used to be a car with so few redeeming features we'd struggle to say anything positive about it – dull looking, dull to drive, with a poorly laid out interior that looked cheap. It was an antichrist car.
Then along came Stelantis, and things took a turn for the better. The new Mokka is a striking-looking thing that can be brought to life with various contrast paint jobs. The interior doesn't quite keep pace with the outside's aesthetics, but it's roomy and crammed with infotainment screens. The Ford Puma's driving dynamics have the Vauxhall licked, but the Mokka is available with electric power and a choice of PureTech petrols that are punchy and frugal. Unsurprisingly, Vauxhall sold 29,984 of them, making the Mokka Britain's tenth most popular car.
9. Audi A3 Sportback
You might expect to see the Volkswagen Golf on this list of the UK's most popular cars, but it's a sign of our changing tastes in cars – our love for premium badges – that means it's an Audi on this list, not a Volkswagen.
You may be aware that the Audi A3 is basically just a Golf with added tinsel. As a result, it's a handsome-looking machine on the outside and tectonically built on the inside, complete with infotainment screen clarity you'd expect to find in cars costing a lot more. Beautifully packaged, the A3 has plenty of room for people and a square boot packed with features. In terms of driving, it's quiet, comfortable and decent in bends, plus you can choose from petrol, diesel and hybrid engines. As a nation, we bought 30,159 of them, making the A3 the UK's ninth most popular car.
8. Nissan Juke
The Nissan Juke is everything the modern car buyer wants (at least for the 31,745 people in the UK who bought one – the country's eighth most popular car): strikingly styled, roomy, cheap to run and fully connected.
The Juke's raised driving position gives you the feeling of safety craved by SUV owners, but the Juke is also relatively sporty to drive with a ride and handling balance that puts you on the more sorted end of the small crossover spectrum. It's a shame the petrol and petrol-electric engine range gives you little to get excited about. The cabin quality could be better, but the interior is well-designed and roomy, and connecting your phone to the car's infotainment is simple. It’s a car that does most things well.
7. Mini hatch
On a list of the most popular cars sold in the UK, the Mini is a rarity because it can also pique the interest of enthusiasts charmed by its neat handling and smart looks.
It's a polished performer, the Mini, with independent rear suspension and a handling setup weighted towards the enthusiast; you can throw it around bends to your heart's content or drive it sensibly and get fuel economy that would make a proper performance car wince. Factor in the stylish, highly personalisable looks and posh interior and – as 33,385 people who bought one found out – you're onto a winner. Even the tight back seat and tiny boot weren't enough to stop this being the seventh most popular car in the UK.
6. Hyundai Tucson
If you want to know how quickly Chinese EVs will progress, look at how fast the South Korean Hyundai Tucson has been transformed from low-selling oddball to a mid-range performer to a strikingly designed SUV that's the UK's sixth most popular car. We bought 34,469 of them last year.
The Tucson has everything you want (and a bit more) from a family SUV. Hyundai's previously cautious styling is flung out the window in favour of a boldface and muscular creases and the interior has experienced a similar renaissance, with large infotainment screens allowing for a minimalist look. It's highly connectable and has loads of space. Okay, the drive is vanilla, but as a car to handle the day-to-day drudgery of school runs and motorway commutes, the Tucson's ideal.
5. Tesla Model Y
As an expensive EV, the Tesla Model Y's appearance as the UK's fifth most popular – with 35,899 sold – might be a surprise, but it's a sign of things to come as we gradually phase out ICEs. If you want an even bigger sign, the Tesla was the most popular car sold, full stop, in December last year.
In fairness, it's not hard to see why. The Model Y gives you the full Tesla experience with generous performance, unreal EV refinement and driveline smoothness, packed into a practical SUV interior with plenty of space and Tesla's trademark touchscreen infotainment. Even the range is good. The Y can get more than 330 miles between charges, and you get access to Tesla's excellent supercharger network, which is infinitely better than contending with the myriad third party chargers other EV owners have to deal with.
4. Kia Sportage
The Kia Sportage is a copy-and-paste of the Hyundai Tucson, which shares the same parts, but while the Hyundai has a five-year warranty, the Kia comes with seven years of coverage that could swing it into favour with canny family car buyers.
The Kia is much like the Hyundai in all other departments. Its pinched grille makes it eye-catching for a family SUV, but its raised ride height makes it easy to fit child seats, and the boxy shape means you have plenty of space. It's well equipped, and while the drive is unspectacular, the engine range (you can have petrol, diesel or petrol-electric hybrid options) has something for everyone. It's the UK's fourth most popular car, with 36,135 sold.
3. Vauxhall Corsa
Ford may have killed the Fiesta, but Vauxhall's belief that there's life in the small car yet has been proven correct by the Corsa’s third-placed position on this list of the UK's most popular cars – we bought 40,816 of them last year.
Much like the Mokka, Stellantis money has breathed new life into the Corsa, transforming it from a budget option to a genuine class contender. It looks brilliant on the outside, and while the interior is dull – and a bit cramped in the back – it claws back points for its decent infotainment. Sure, the drive is less than enthralling, but the Corsa's petrol-sipping PureTech engines are pleasingly potent, and the Corsa Electric has a respectable range for a small EV.
2. Nissan Qashqai
The Nissan Qashqai may be more vanilla than a plain tub of Haagen-Dazs, but let's not forget David Twohig, the man who went on to engineer the Alpine A110, cut his teeth on the original Qashqai so we owe its success a debt of gratitude for that if nothing else.
The latest Qashqai is an all-new car, but the fundamentals that made the original so popular remain, meaning it looks like an SUV, has lots of interior space but handles like a low-slung car and has comparable running costs. The latest model adds modern minimalist looks, an infotainment-heavy interior and a clever petrol-electric hybrid that uses the engine purely as a generator to charge the battery. A high seller since the original went on sale in 2006, the current model is the UK's second-most-popular car, with 43,321 sold.
1. Ford Puma
The Ford Puma demonstrates that sensible family cars don't have to be ditch-water dull. We cried sacrilege when Ford used the Puma badge (previously affixed to a sweet-handling 1990s coupe) for its new small SUV but – fact is – the Puma is a good-looking, surprisingly sweet steer.
But it's also practical. There's room for four adults on the inside, and the boot is big and; under its floor, you'll find the Megabox, which sounds like something you'd buy in a Scottish kebab house but is actually a plastic tub you can use to store dirty boots and the like, with a drainage hole that makes it easy to clean. It's this eye for detail that helped Ford sell 49,591 Pumas, making it, by a significant margin, the UK's best-selling car.
Vauxhall Mokka
Audi A3 Sportback
Nissan Juke
Mini hatch
Hyundai Tucson
Tesla Model Y
Kia Sportage
Vauxhall Corsa
Nissan Qashqai
Ford Puma
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