New car sales hit ten year high - Toyota Yaris breaks in to top 10

New car sales in March 2014 hit 464,824 – a ten year high – as the UK’s new car market continues to grow, and the new Toyota Yaris hits the top ten list.

The Toyota Yaris accounted for over 20% of hybrid sales in March 2014

We’ve got used to new car sales (well, new car registrations) hitting new highs month after month, but March 2014 managed to top even the recent levels with the highest monthly registrations in a decade.

March is normally the year’s highest new car month with the ‘year’ plate change coming in, with almost 20 per cent of cars registered in that month alone (it used to be August when there was just one plate change a year) and 2014 saw a jump of nearly 18 per cent over 2013, and the highest total since March 2014.

Still sitting atop the list is the Ford Fiesta (25,753) with more than 50 per cent more sales than the second place Ford Focus (16,860), with the usual suspects taking up the rest of the top ten (full top ten sales for March 2014 below).

Interestingly, March also saw the biggest ever numbers for the registration of alternatively fuelled cars, with numbers up by 64 per cent year on year to 8,713 – not a huge number but one helped by car makers making hybrid and ‘option’ rather than a statement.

That helped the Toyota Yaris break in to the top ten for the first time with 7,438 sales, of which a quarter were Yaris hybrids, a number that represents over 20 per cent of all alternatively fuelled cars sold in March.

Onwards and upwards, it would seem, for the UK’s new car business.