New car sales continue to rise for third month

Oct 6 2009 by Iain Laing, The Journal

The July increase in UK car sales was the first year-on-year rise for 15 months, although sales for the first eight months of this year are still down 21.5% compared with January to August 2008.

Ahead of the official figures, Japanese car maker Mazda revealed it had sold over 11,300 models in the UK last month – the highest ever.

The September total of 11,372 sales was an increase of nearly 900 – over 8% – over the previous highest month in March 2008 when the marque achieved sales of 10,497 units. It is also the biggest single month for Mazda since the marque arrived in the UK in the 1960s.

“This has been a difficult year for the industry,” said Jeremy Thomson, Mazda’s UK managing director. “However, we have seen our retail share increase through the year, and this is the real test of popularity rather than just simple volume.

“To put the September sales achievement into perspective, it is just 4,488 sales short of the full-year volume in 2001 when we took over the business. Furthermore, we have sold more Mazda2s in September than we used to sell in a whole year with the old Mazda2.”

“While this is a reason for celebration at Mazda, we recognise that the recovery in the car industry is still fragile.”