The biggest issue affecting manufacturers may have been covid:

• lockdown appled differently in different countries
• component supply logistics
• stocks in country vs needing to be imported
• buyer behaviours impacted differently depending on circumstances
• international travel decimated affecting car rental company purchases

This won't have affected all manufactuerers equally, and I am not sure we would ever get to the bottom of the reality for changes in individual model variants..

To be fair, the Cupra figures are not relevant as they are a new brand (newish) and a niche one as well, rather like DS to Citroen. I'm not sure they'll do much better in that respect over the longer term. Subaru probably was just coming off a bad year - possibly due to model changes?

MG, Hyundai and Kia however, are the biggest winners, and Renault and stablemate Mitsubish the biggest losers - losing a third of all sales. Those with cheap (MG), decent-rated (KIA/Hyundai) or 'in vogue' EVs (Polestar) will have done better than others.

I also think that Hyundai/KIA are doing well because they have the best business model at the moment, they appear to look after and listen to customers more than most, and can get ahead of rivals in terms of what R&D track to go down.

IMHO they are now taking sales away from Ford, Vauxhall, Nissan, Mazda, Honda and Toyota, and perhaps soon from the German brands to a greater degree. The big Euro and Japanese rivals should be worried.

All despite the pandemic related issues. Kudos to them.

Edited by SLO76 on 22/12/2021 at 15:40