NEW CAR SALES FIGURES for May show that the dramatic fall in new car sales continues.
Nationwide, 59,894 new vehicles were sold, a 35.3 percent reduction compared to the May 2019 figure. Worryingly, the May sales figures represent the largest drop since VFACTS statistics began in 1991.
The reasons aren’t hard to ascertain: droughts, floods, bushfires, tight lending conditions, unfavourable exchange rates, political uncertainty and, of course, COVID-19. Household income has shrunk and consumer confidence has fallen.
Among the gloomy numbers, there are some anomalies. BMW sales fell just 1.9 percent in May. Audi also recorded surprisingly strong numbers, declining a relatively modest 4.3 percent.
Compare those falls to Mercedes-Benz which saw sales fall by 32.2 percent and Porsche which fell 29.5 percent in May.
Some observers have suggested BMW’s figures have been bolstered by a large increase in the registration of “company cars” – cars that are owned by the company itself. It has long been an issue that car companies are able to publish “sales” figures that aren’t, strictly speaking, sales at all. Dealers often register cars as “demonstrator” models to artificially inflate registration figures, and cars registered for in-house use are not sales to the general public.
A BMW spokesperson suggested, not unreasonably, that the reason for the high number of company car registrations is to cater for the need for loan vehicles to be offered to owners affected by the Takata recall. The spokesperson went on to elucidate further that even if the company vehicle “sales” were removed from the numbers, BMW’s results are still impressive. “So far this year, BMW has registered 1008 company fleet vehicles. This represents a reduction of 672 units (-40.0 percent) versus the same time period in 2019. If the registration of company fleet vehicles is removed from our data, BMW would have achieved growth of -0.8 percent versus the reported decline of 6.2 percent year to date.”
What was that about lies, damned lies and statistics?