The UK’s DIRE new car production figures for April are meaningless

New car production in the UK dropped by 44.5 per cent in April, but although the downward trend continues the figures are meaningless.

There’s been a downward trend in new car production in the UK in the last year, but that’s down to a wide variety of factors – including Brexit uncertainties.

But the headline figure for April 2019 of a drop in new car production of almost half (-44.5 per cent) isn’t because of Brexit directly, but as a result of car manufactures planning for a Brexit that didn’t happen.

A significant number of car makers – including Jaguar Land Rover, BMW, MINI and Honda – scheduled a shut down to coincide with a Brexit date of 29 March to ensure minimal disruption. But in the end we didn’t leave the EU (quelle surprise), but the planned shutdowns went ahead anyway.

But the April shutdowns effectively replaced regular summer shutdowns for maintenance and holidays, so we can probably expect to see the summer months showing growth in manufacturing to balance the big drop in April.

Mike Hawes, SMMT CEO, took the figures as an opportunity to ram home the message that leaving the EU without a deal is madness for jobs and manufacturing. He said:

Today’s figures are evidence of the vast cost and upheaval Brexit uncertainty has already wrought on UK automotive manufacturing businesses and workers. Prolonged instability has done untold damage, with the fear of ‘no deal’ holding back progress, causing investment to stall, jobs to be lost and undermining our global reputation. This is why ‘no deal’ must be taken off the table immediately and permanently.

He’s not wrong, but unless sane heads in Parliament finally prevail we could end up tipping out of the EU on Halloween without a deal.