{"id":9528,"date":"2017-01-05T17:47:53","date_gmt":"2017-01-05T17:47:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/?p=9528"},"modified":"2017-01-05T17:48:45","modified_gmt":"2017-01-05T17:48:45","slug":"uk-van-market-hit-new-record-in-2016-but-only-just","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/9528","title":{"rendered":"UK van market hit new record in 2016, but only just"},"content":{"rendered":"

Light commercial vehicle registrations hit a new record of 375,687 units in 2016,\u00a0according to the latest figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).<\/p>\n

The van market has now expanded for four consecutive years, but it’s worth noting that\u00a0total registrations last year were just 1% higher than in 2015<\/a>.\u00a0As this graph shows, the rush to buy new vans is definitely starting to slow down:<\/p>\n

\"Van

Van registrations rolling year totals December 2010 to-date 2016 (source: SMMT)<\/p><\/div>\n

Indeed, there was a marked slowdown in December, when registrations fell by 10.,4% compared to December 2016.<\/p>\n

A closer look at the figures shows that last year’s growth was driven by pickups, rather than vans. Sales of the fashionable four-wheelers rose by 17.6% to 47,715 last year.<\/p>\n

Without this uplift, my calculations suggest that total LCV registrations would have fallen by about 3,000 units last year. What this means is that new van registrations did fell in 2016<\/strong>, albeit only slightly.<\/p>\n

Last year’s top sellers<\/h2>\n

I’ve written about Ford’s dominance of the UK LCV market before, and the SMMT’s full-year figures show that this situation remains unchanged.\u00a0Here are\u00a0the top ten LCVs for\u00a0last month and for 2016 as a whole:<\/p>\n

\"LCV

Source: SMMT<\/p><\/div>\n

2017 promises to be a more uncertain year for the LCV market. Although sales remain strong,\u00a0I wouldn’t be surprised if the pullback seen in December\u00a0continues, allowing registrations to move closer to historic average levels.<\/p>\n

Whatever happens, we’ll continue to keep you up to date on developments in the van market here at vanrental.co.uk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UK LCV registrations hit a new record in 2016, but if you ignore the surge in pickup sales, a slightly different picture emerges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9529,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9528"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9528"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9533,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9528\/revisions\/9533"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}