UK motor industry bounces back

By Luke Madden

04th September 2009

There's positive signs of recovery in the UK motor indsutry with recently released figures showing a 6% rise in new car sales in August compared to the same time last year. A total of 67,006 cars were sold with about one-in-four of those being bought under the government Scrappage Scheme.

Although the figures sound promising August generally only accounts for 3.3% of overall sales before the new '59' plate is introduced in September when a massive 17% of all new cars are sold. Most importantly, the SMMT released figures that show total new car sales are still down 21.5% compared with the figures at this time last year.

For now at least though there are signs of recovery but industry analysts are worried that sales figures will begin to fall again once the £300m set aside for the Scrappage Scheme runs out which, as some reports suggest, could happen before the end of the year.

Tell us about your car in our Driver Power survey.