UK car sales down for first time in 43 months

UK car sales experienced a 1.1% drop in the month of October. This marks the end of 43 constructive months of rises.

The new car market is slowly beginning to stabilise after three and a half year of rises. Many are blaming the recent Volkswagen scandal with the brand itself suffering a 9.84% fall.

It’s not all bad news however as overall 2,274,550 cars have been registered so far in 2015, 6.4% more that at this time last year.

So can the Volkswagen ‘Dieselgate’ scandal be blamed for the fall? Not necessarily.

In the last three and a half years car sales have been on the rise every month, reaching a peak of 462, 517 in September 2015. It was the best September on record for new car sales. This suggests that people are still very much interested in purchasing new vehicles.

The drop can be blamed on many things but let’s be honest, it was to be expected.

Every record in the world has an expiry date and will eventually come to an end. Did the Volkswagen scandal have something to with the drop? Perhaps, but it we can’t place the entire blame on the brand whilst it is dealing with the scandal.

In reality it was most likely a mix of different factors that led to the fall.

All we can do at this point is wait at this point. Once the November figures are released we’ll see if October was a one off or whether the trend is going to continue. Instead of coming to conclusions straight away, we need more data to fully understand what these figures mean to UK car sales and the new cars market.