April Vehicle Sales in Full Bloom in U.K.

U.K. new-car sales register their strongest growth in 14 months as April deliveries jump 14.8% to 163,357 units. The market’s best April performance since 2008 prompts the industry to boost its full-year forecast to 2.11 million.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders concedes high demand for certain models in March and an early Easter break may have pushed some sales into April, but raised its outlook as the latest result drove the 4-month total up 8.9% to 768,555 units.

The latest full-year prediction is up from SMMT’s January forecast of 2.06 million units and would represent a 3% rise on 2012 volumes. But the figure is still 300,000 short of the pre-recession market.

Further growth to 2.12 million units is expected in 2014.

U.K. car sales are outperforming those in the 26 continental European Union countries, SMMT interim CEO Mike Baunton says.

“The U.K. continues to perform well ahead of the troubled Eurozone as consumer confidence, regular purchase cycles, attractive finance deals and wider market factors continue to make new-car buying favorable for motorists,” he says.

The growth has been supported by the private sector, where volumes were up 32.3% in April to 81,753 units and ahead 15.2% to 376,369 for the year-to-date. Fleet deliveries showed a 0.8% uptick to 75,067 last month for a 2.7% rise after four months to 357,780.

Business volumes rose 8.5% to 6,537 for a 4-month improvement of 11.7% to 34,406.

Cars powered by all fuel types have shown growth over the first four months of 2013, although gasoline-fueled models’ market share has reached 49.9% of sales, supported by an increased demand for small cars among private buyers.

The SMMT says the minicar segment continues to post the best growth, while the supermini category remains the largest. All segments, except upper medium, posted growth during April and year-to-date.

The Ford Fiesta was the U.K.’s best-selling model both in April and year-to-date with 8,083 and 42,392 units, respectively.

The Vauxhall Corsa (6,084) narrowly outsold the Ford Focus (5,994) for the month, but the Focus was ahead year-to-date with 31,025 units to the Corsa’s 30,645.

Ford’s April sales rose 7.5% to 22,178 units for a market-leading 4-month total up 3.0% to 106,525.

Commercial vehicle-sales jumped 30.9% in April to 24,370 units for a 4-month total up 11.8% to 103,312. Within that segment, van deliveries surged 43.0% to 20,751 for the month and 17.6% to 89,633 year-to-date. Truck demand fell 12.1% to 3,619 for the month and dropped 15.5% to 13,679 in the first four months.

SMMT Commercial Vehicle Manager Nigel Base says the mixed CV results “could be symptomatic of operators holding off on buying vehicles in anticipation of new Euro 6 (emissions) legislation coming into play later this year, as well as wider economic challenges impacting the road-transport sector.”