12:48 pm, July 24, 2025
The overall car sales market is set to reach a new peak in 2025 with 9.75 million sales, according to the latest forecast from Auto Trader.
Its projection incudes sales of both new and used cars and reflects a robust retail market despite economic challenges, with the company reporting 509 million visits to the Auto Trader website in the forts half of the year – a record number.
The company reports that it anticipates new car sales of around 1.96 million for 2025 as a whole, with renewed interest in new cars following the government’s Electric Car Grant announcement earlier this month – reporting that the share of new electric car enquiries on Auto Trader jumped from 15 per cent to 25 per cent in the first 24 hours after the grant scheme was announced.
But the real growth is anticipated to be in the used car market, which has seen strong momentum all year. Strong levels of consumer demand have helped cars to sell at near record speeds, claims Auto Trader, with total sales increasing by two per cent year-on-year in the first half of 2025.
The report suggests that most of this growth is from independent dealers, with sales volumes at independents remaining quite flat, with the three-to-five-year-old area of the used car market being particularly flat – a knock-on effect of reduced manufacturing numbers during the Covid-19 pandemic.
On the back of this, Auto Trader’s data shows a rise in consumer demand for older and more affordable stock, with interest for cars aged five-to-10-years-old increasing by 5.2 per cent in the first half of the year.
According to Auto Trader’s data, ‘economy stock’ is set to enter a golden era, with 10.1 million cars aged five-to-10 years predicted to be in the total UK car parc by the end of 2025, whilst the number of 10-15-year-old vehicles is set to hit 8.5 million.
It will mark the highest number of older cars on record, claims the report, but will continue growing in the coming years. And the consumer demand for these more affordable vehicles is high, so there’s a big opportunity for retailers to leverage this and continue the strong performance from the first half of the year.
