30 September 2012

The UK new car market will see more forced registration activity from European carmakers under pressure to keep factories open and maintain production volumes, according to Duncan Aldred, managing director of Vauxhall.

Speaking exclusively to Auto Retail Agenda at the Paris Motor Show, Aldred said: ‘My guess is that activity will increase because the UK market is stable, which is a lot better than most of Europe, and the pound strengthening has actually improved the profitability of the UK a little bit.

‘In a European market where everyone else is declining fast, I think a lot of manufacturers are looking at the UK and saying “can you make up the gap”.’

Aldred hinted that much of the activity was coming from premium brand manufacturers and that not all of it was pre-registration. Changing management cars across a national sales company can add 1000 registrations overnight.

‘People are dropping large volumes of cars into the market and there’s no division now between anybody. People will chase market share and volume from any brand. It makes it tough,’ he said.

But Aldred added that the underlying September new car market was ‘strong’ and predicted that it could reach 390,000 registrations (car and van combined) for the month, around 5% up on last year. Vauxhall’s retail market share is likely to be above 10% but overall volumes will be down because the firm has stepped away from short term fleet business.

‘We’re not in that (forced registration) game. We’ve stepped away from potentially less desirable business and accepted we’ll lose market share in the process. What’s key is that we grow market share in the right places,’ he said.

Tags: Duncan Aldred, forced registrations, pre-registrations, September sales 2012, Vauxhall