VW Polo, Toyota Yaris and Kia Sportage UK’s best-selling cars in July

New car registrations in the UK in July 2021 were down by nearly 30 per cent, although plug-in sales rose by a similar amount.

The whole Covid pandemic thing led to properly topsy-turvey new car registrations in 2020, with months like April 2020 recording almost nothing, and July 2020 recording a big jump as showrooms were opened for the first time in months.

That ‘freak’ results in July last year now reflects on July 2021’s figures as they’re down by 29.5 per cent on last year (and down 22.3 per cent on this century’s July average), although that is pretty much down to Covid aftereffects like the global chip shortage and the current ‘Pingdemic’, without which sale/registrations would doubtless have been much higher.

It’s also impacted on registrations by model too, with the VW Polo, Toyota Yaris and Kia Sportage topping the new registrations top 10, rather than seeing a couple of Fords and a Vauxhall at the top.

Inevitably, despite sales of petrol and diesel cars declining by 45.5 and 69.5 per cent respectively (although MHEV ICE numbers grew), sales/registrations of BEVs rose by 36.5 per cent, PHEVs by 32.2 per cent and HEVs by 15.5 per cent, with cars with a plug now grabbing 17 per cent of sales.

Mike Hawes, SMMT Chief Executive, said:

The automotive sector continues to battle against shortages of semiconductors and staff, which is throttling our ability to translate a strengthening economic outlook into a full recovery.

The next few weeks will see changes to self-isolation policies which will hopefully help those companies across the industry dealing with staff absences, but the semiconductor shortage is likely to remain an issue until at least the rest of the year.