9:47 am, January 5, 2017
THE FORD Fiesta was once again the best-selling car in the UK during 2016, amassing 120,525 registrations over the past 12 months.
The small hatchback is now not only the best-selling car ever in the UK, but has remained at the top of the sales charts for eight consecutive years.
The UK car industry hit another record high in 2016, with a total of 2,692,786 cars registered, an increase of 2.3 per cent year-on-year.
The Fiesta is followed by the Vauxhall Corsa in the sales charts, although the Corsa is more than 40,000 registrations behind the popular Ford, with 77,110 registrations in the past year.
The top three have remained the same for 2016 as we saw in 2015, with the Focus coming in third once again with 70,545 registrations.
Fourth on the list was the Volkswagen Golf, but it saw a slight drop in registrations year-on-year, with its final figure standing at 69,492, down by 3,914 sales.
In fifth position is the Nissan Qashqai with a total of 62,682 registrations in 2016 – up by more than 1,000 registrations on last year’s figures.
This was followed by the Vauxhall Astra, which saw 60,719 registrations in 2016, and jumped up the sales charts from its seventh-place finish in 2015. It’s swapped places with the Volkswagen Polo, which saw 54,448 registrations in 2016.
The Mini remained a popular model once again in 2016 and saw an increase in registrations to 48,328. Following this was the Mercedes-Benz C-Class with 44,184 registrations, while the Audi A3 took the final place on the top-10 list with 43,808 registrations.
Chairman and managing director of Ford of Britain Andy Barratt spoke to Car Dealer about the Fiesta’s success and said: ‘More than 4.5 million Fiestas have been sold in the UK in 40 years, so the chances are that most of the population have been touched by the car.
‘It performs incredibly well to the private motorist, to the business driver and to some really key business user segments – people like the NHS particularly love Fiesta and driving schools love it too. So many people have their first part of their motoring journey in a Fiesta and they continue that relationship.’
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