The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) has revised its projection of total new car sales for 2012 to over two million vehicles, following another month of year-on-year growth for sales figures.

A total of 151,252 new cars were registered in the UK in October, a rise of 12.09% year-on-year, with 1,771,861 registrations for the year-to-date, growing by 4.97% or 83,823 units.

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Private sales of new cars were up 23.89% for October to 68,191 units, and up 12.38% year-to-date to 813,139 units. Market share of private sales was 45.08% for the month, up from 40.8% in October 2011, and 45.89% for the year-to-date, up from 42.9% this time last year.

Including both new-plate registration months of March and September, every month so far this year except February, typically the quietest month of the year, has recorded year-on-year growth.

Registration forecasts for 2012 as a whole have been revised upward by the SMMT twice already this year; from a total of 1.92m to 1.95m following figures for April new registrations, and up again to 1.97m units in August.

Studies for Q3 published in October by White Clarke Group and Professor Peter Cooke, however, have kept to the more conservative estimated new sales total for 2012 of 1.94m units, while extrapolations by Motor Finance have put the final figure around the 1.99m-unit mark.

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Do deals sell wheels?

By brand, major carmakers – those with October sales in four figures – all saw a year-on-year bump except Renault, going through a pre-emptive retail downsizing and which saw October new registrations nearly halved to 3,271, and Honda, which was down by almost a third to 3,352 sales.

The biggest gain was at Škoda, gaining 61.65% in October new registrations, selling 4,759 units, increasing monthly market share to 3.15% from 2.18% in 2011, and pushing year-to-date UK brand sales past the full-year 2011 total. The brand also launched an aggressive finance campaign at the end of September offering PCP, 0% HP and no-VAT deals.

Of those brands to make headline finance offers ahead of the fourth quarter, Citroën, which launched a new 0% deal, saw the biggest bump in new sales in October – up 26.51% to 5,888 units.

Suzuki, which has extended no-VAT and PCP deals, saw a gain of 18.83% to 934 units in October new sales.

Two of the biggest-selling marques in the UK, Ford and Volkswagen, each announced a range of PCP deals around the end of the third quarter. While the American carmaker recorded a 12.25% rise in new registrations, selling 20,740 new units in October, their German competitor grew by 11.35% and registered 13,480 new sales.

Further analysis of automotive brands’ results will be published in the November issue of Motor Finance magazine.

richard.brown@vrlfinancialnews.com