Chinese cars' popularity in the UK is proof brand loyalty is fading fast
Mike Rutherford thinks the growing popularity of Chinese cars in the UK is proof that brand loyalty is on the decline.
After last month’s new-car sales game was played out in showrooms across Britain, it’s commiserations and concern for some manufacturers, and congratulations and champagne for others. The results in March revealed vehicle registration lows and highs the likes of which I’ve never seen before, with a barely known start-up company somehow grabbing the top spot.
The Jaecoo 7, with a recommended retail price of £29,210, was Britain’s best-selling car last month. This extraordinary achievement is all the more remarkable when, 37 months ago, this now record-breaking company didn’t even exist.
But it’s the quarterly registration figures that provide a much wider, clearer picture of current trends, after 600,000-plus paying customers demonstrated the brands they swerved away from or bought into from January to March. With this in mind, the Jaecoo 7 is only the second best-selling car so far this year. Above it sits the venerable Ford Puma. Below, the practical Kia Sportage.
Of greater significance, though, is the seemingly unstoppable overall hike in sales for Jaecoo and almost every Chinese manufacturer during the first quarter of 2026 vs the same period in 2025. GWM sales jumped 27 per cent; Skywell, BYD and Omoda were up by between 114 and 183 per cent; Jaecoo enjoyed a 485 per cent rise; XPeng leapt 881 per cent and Leapmotor sales sky-rocketed by 1,504 per cent. Obviously most of these brands were in their infancy a year ago, but the growth is rapid.
The likes of Changan, Chery and Geely are even newer on the UK scene. So fresh are they to Britain that measuring their respective year-on-year sales increases isn’t yet possible. But all three are already selling well, with Chery enjoying the greatest success. How great? What seems like five minutes after landing in Britain, it’s outselling Honda, Fiat, Jeep and Lexus, and if it continues to grow at this pace, it’s on course to overtake Suzuki, Dacia and Mazda and other long-established mass-market brands this year.
A new trend has clearly emerged during the first quarter of 2026, and it goes a bit like this: loyalty to many brands, models and car-producing nations is fast disappearing. UK consumers are increasingly defecting away from the old, often tired ‘establishment’ firms and opting instead for handsome, temptingly priced, good-quality vehicles from the new kids on the automotive block in China.
Fact is, we’re already buying more Chinese cars than those made by Japanese, Korean, French, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, American or British companies. Who’d have thought it, eh? Cars from China are now second only to German vehicles in terms of appeal to, and demand from, paying customers in the UK.
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