Vauxhall sales are up because it’s not greedy, unlike some of its rivals

The official new car-buying results for 2025 are in. And just over two million were purchased by consumers in Britain last year. So far, so good.

Of the Brit-based companies, Bentley and MINI did well to increase sales. But plucky Vauxhall (still British, right?) performed even more impressively, thanks to a hike in orders plus the added bonus of grabbing a larger share of the growing market. This is what happens when a firm gets real, becomes less greedy and does the fair, decent and sensible thing of offering the right deals (especially on Fronteras and Grandlands), resulting in more Vauxhalls in the hands of more paying customers. Simple! Let this be a lesson to some of its sleepy rivals, who daftly continued to price themselves out of the market.

Delve deep into the data, as I’ve done in recent days, and it’s clear that some traditional companies are progressively and inexplicably deteriorating when it comes to the basic task of selling products to generally savvy British consumers, who rightly refuse to be ripped off or stick with legacy brands.

Meanwhile, one daringly disruptive band of manufacturers that’s more rad than trad has quickly mastered the art of embracing and appealing to such customers. What they have in common is this: they’re largely unknown, comparative newcomers based in and primarily (but not always) manufacturing out of state-of-the-art factories in China.

Never mind that most Brits know next to nothing about them and sometimes struggle to recognise, say or even spell their names. More importantly, they’re convincing us with prices, quality, designs and warranties that sit somewhere between good and great.

Almost overnight, this new, still somewhat mysterious Gang of 12 has won over the hearts, minds and wallets of UK buyers. Brits are, for the first time ever, buying more cars from BYD, Changan, Chery, Geely, GWM, Jaecoo, Leapmotor, Maxus, MG, Omoda, Skywell and XPeng than from dozens of long-established UK-based firms put together.

It’s a historic moment that this handful of Chinese makers is already selling more cars here than all our UK-based businesses. And to add insult to injury, their successes at such an early stage of campaigning in the UK are largely responsible for British firms now suffering a sub-10 per cent share of the domestic market they once dominated.

At last count we had 11 mainstream or major premium/sports car makers on British soil, plus at least 60 small specialists. It was inevitable that the Gang of 12 would sell more cars to UK consumers than our 70-plus Brit-based firms. But that historic moment has been and gone. Now, we must look forward by understanding and dealing with the harsh fact that just over 90 per cent of British residents who bought new cars last year chose not to buy from British-based firms. Now, why would that be?

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