The best and worst selling cars of 2019 – Axon’s Automotive Anorak

The overall British new car market fell to a seven year low in 2019 of 2.3 million units, with registrations down by 2.4 per cent over the previous year, with 2018 itself witnessing a near-seven per cent decline over 2017.

With huge uncertainty about the future of diesels engines in the UK (and across the world), sales of new derv-engined passenger cars slowed by a whopping 22 per cent to account for around a quarter of all British new cars sold. Conversely, registrations of more eco-friendly hybrids and fully-electric new cars rose by a healthy 17 per cent (with electrics up by an electrifying 144 per cent) to take a 7.4 per cent slice of the British new car market (EVs being 1.6 per cent of the 2019 UK total).

With the contentious proposed daytime banning of all diesel-engined vehicles into the centre of Bristol by March 2021 (ironic, given that Bristol City Council has recently purchased a fleet of brand new diesel-powered vehicles!), plus the possible prohibition of all internal combustion engined cars into York city centre by 2023, the future use of diesels looks increasingly perilous in the UK, even though modern diesels are the cleanest ever.

The sharp drop in diesel sales saw the average CO2 rating of a new UK market car rise to an average of c.128g/km, a near 3 per cent increase, which is discouraging, and heading in the wrong direction from the EU average vehicle target of 95g/km.

Although Fiesta-style superminis and Focus-style family cars still made-up more than half of Britain’s new car sales, these markets sectors declined overall last year, as did the registrations of Panda-type city cars, Mondeo-sized ‘mainstream’ family cars, plus MPVs, sports cars and coupes. Some premium sector saloons, plus crossovers and off-roaders, all enjoyed some sales growth over the previous year in the on-going onslaught of high-rise SUVs.

But what about the cars themselves? Which cars won, and which cars really didn’t? Well for the 11^th consecutive year in a row, the Ford Fiesta was the UK’s most popular new car in 2019 (and consistently Britain’s best-selling car since 2014). That means the Fiesta has topped the British sales charts for 32 years in total since the B-segment model’s original launch in January 1977.

Around 20,000 units behind the 77,633 new Fiestas sold, Volkswagen’s run-out seventh-generation Golf took its highest ever UK sales position in second place (58,994 examples) after 45 years of sales on these shores. The Golf overtook the Ford Focus and Vauxhall Astra, traditional C-segment best-sellers.

The Ford Focus itself took the third podium slot in 2019 with sales of 56,629 units, with the soon-to-be-replaced Vauxhall Corsa coming in fourth (54,239) and the increasingly popular Mercedes-Benz A-Class fifth (53,724).

The remainder of the 2019 British new cars sales league was made up by the sixth placed Nissan Qashqai (the most popular crossover SUV with 52,532 sales), the Ford Kuga in at seventh (41,671 examples), the hatchback MINI models in eighth (41,188), the VW Polo ninth (37,453), and the Kia Sportage breaking into tenth position at 34,502 units.

The top five winning marques in terms of pure percentage sales growth where as follows:

-       MG +44.5% (13,075 sales)

-       Dacia +28.1% (30,951)

-       Lexus +26.7% (15,713)

-       Porsche +22.7% (15,257)

-       Alpine +20.4% (171)

The five car brands suffering the largest sales decline where:

-       Infiniti -61.1% (292 sales, and now withdrawn from the UK)

-       Smart -47.3% (4,022)

-       Abarth -38.8% (3,448)

-       Ssangyong -29.9 (1,930)

-       Maserati -28.1% (933)

For the wider European markets, new car sales in key countries (Germany, France, Spain and Italy) were either static or marginally down, with a late surge of registrations in December as manufacturers scrambled to be the latest EU WTL emission regulations. As with the UK, European sales were buoyed by growing demand for hybrids, EVs and SUVs.

Further afield, new passenger car sales in the world’s two largest markets – China and the USA – were nothing to write home about last year, the former seeing a small market decline (subject to final figures still to be confirmed), with the US static at around 17 million new vehicles.

In the ultra-competitive premium market sector between the dominant German trio of Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, it was Mercedes that took top sales honours for 2019, both in the UK and globally, with BMW second and Audi declining in most markets (down 3.4 per cent in the UK, with BMW -1.3 per cent and Mercedes dropping just 0.2 per cent).

Britain’s Jaguar failed to make significant in-roads into this German-lead sector, with worldwide sales continuing to slide, down by 2.6 per cent to just over 36,000 units in the UK. JLR faced a global decline of 5.9 per cent to 557,706 new vehicle deliveries worldwide.

The more prestigious Goodwood-based Rolls-Royce bucked the downward trend, enjoying its most successful year ever with a 25 per cent sales increase, resulting in 5,152 models sold. Why? The new Cullinan SUV, of course.

Leading Industry watchers forecast that British new car sales will continue to remain low, but stable, for 2020, with demand for electric and plug-in hybrids likely to increase substantially. This will be helped by some important new electric models due to be launched during the year, including the new Vauxhall Corsa E, Peugeot 208 e and Volkswagen ID.3.

Internal combustion power is forecast to still account for around 85 plus per cent of all new car sales, however, but with diesels set to be the biggest sales losers, not helped by the growing uncertainty about the future use and environmental acceptance of derv in an growing number of British metropolitan areas beyond Bristol, Oxford and York. This year looks like it’ll be another challenging one for the automotive industry and new car sales!