10:41 am, June 21, 2013
ACCORDING to new research conducted by Citroen UK, the Borough of Elmbridge in Surrey is the UK’s ‘convertible capital’, with over 5,300 registered convertibles in the surrounding area.
The results have been released to coincide with the 2013 Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year where UK motorists are expected to get up to 16 hours and 38 minutes of sunshine to enjoy top-down driving.
Research was undertaken as part of the launch of the DS3 Cabrio and Citroen consulted registration data from the DVLA and census information from the Office for National Statistics to map the UK’s convertible hotspots.
Results show that Surrey was the top county overall for convertibles, with four of its districts featuring in the UK top 10 for highest proportion of convertibles registered compared to residential population.
London and districts within the south east counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex, Berkshire and Hampshire completed the 10 most popular locations for convertible ownership.
Despite the temperature climate, the UK has the second largest number of convertible cars per head of population anywhere in the world, with over 900,000 convertibles currently registered. Out of a total 28.7million cars, convertibles account for 3.1 per cent of all cars on UK roads.
Data also found that counties with greater household incomes had the highest rates of convertible ownership and Surrey, ‘convertible capital’, is one of the top five areas in the UK for gross deposable household income, 37.7 per cent higher per head than the national average.
Communications director at Citroen UK, Marc Raven said: ‘Despite our often unsettled climate, UK motorists have a long established love affair with open-air driving.
Raven added: ‘What we didn’t know, however, was which areas embraced wind-in-the-air motoring the most. Thanks to this research, we can see that Surrey and, in particular, Elmbridge, are where the most convertible lovers reside.
