Volkswagen car sales down 20 percent in UK after scandal

There were 12,958 new registrations of Volkswagen branded vehicles in November, down nearly 20 per cent from the same month in 2014, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said in a statement.

“Whilst the United Kingdom economic outlook and consumer confidence both remain positive, the pace of growth in new auto sales has outstripped all these factors in the last few years”.

A total of 178,876 cars were registered in the month, an increase of 3.8% over November 2014, while the overall market in the first 11 months of 2015 has seen 6.2% growth to 2,453,426 units.

The decline in Volkswagen sales was in contrast to the wider United Kingdom market, where automobile sales were up 3.8 percent in November.

Analysts have said VW’s emissions scandal is likely to accelerate a shift away from diesel vehicles that was already underway, and boost demand for smaller gasoline engines and hybrids.

In the United Kingdom, sales of diesel cars overall grew 3.6% in the month.

But some other carmakers also sales fall in November compared with a year ago, with Citroen off 29%, Fiat down 21% and Nissan dropping by 18%.

Sales across China, the largest market for Volkswagen, were up by 1.8% during October. Audi was apparently the only one of the mainstream VW brands not to be majorly affected by the emissions scandal, its registrations dropping 4.4 per cent to 11,083 cars.

“For the real impact you are going to have to wait some months, probably starting in January, February, if there is any”, he added.

As German vehicle giant Volkswagen manages the fallout from its diesel emissions scandal, incoming chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch has reportedly said he believed the company would overcome the crisis. They have to take it on the chin and accept that the customers have a lot of choice of very good cars. This marks a big recovery from October’s sales, which fell by 1.1%, the first monthly fall in United Kingdom sales for almost four years.