Niche brands threaten US dominance

The world's biggest carmakers, General Motors and Ford, both suffered a fall in their share of Britain's booming auto market, which last year saw sales peak at a record 2.56m.

Under siege from European and Asian rivals in their North American home market, the pair are likely to see further inroads being made into their traditional dominance.

Yesterday the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders confirmed that UK car sales in 2002 peaked at more than 2.5m for the first time, up 4.3% on the previous record set in 2001.

But Ford, UK market leader for the 26th year, saw its share fall to 15.63% from 16.44% while GM's Vauxhall fell to 12.43% from 12.63% as smaller, niche players took a bigger slice of Europe's second largest market for new cars.

Focus sells most

Historically, the world's big two have enjoyed a higher percentage share of the UK market where the Japanese groups, Toyota, Nissan and Honda, and European brands such as Audi, BMW and Mercedes continue to grow theirs.

Ford supplied the best selling car, the Focus, which sold 151,209 while Vauxhall's Corsa was the second- biggest seller with 105,199, just ahead of the Astra at 102,107. The two groups sold 400,808 and 318,655 respectively of a total market of 2,563,631 cars. MG Rover underlined its declining pulling power with a market share dip further to 3.87% from 3.95% after selling 99,108 units in 2002. This is up from 97,202 in 2001, but its global sales last year are likely to have fallen below 170,000. Peugeot Citroen, which sold 3.27m vehicles worldwide last year, captured 13.24% of the UK market while Renault, the other large French group, boosted its share to 7.59%.

The UK market, according to the SMMT, is expected to fall to 2.38m this year, prompting consultants Pricewater-houseCoopers to warn that franchised dealer numbers could be cut from 6,000 to 4,000 over the next decade. PwC said that both new car sales and margins were under pressure, with dealers likely to make typically only 1%-3% on new car sales and to suffer increased competition from independent dealers and service centres.

This emerged as KPMG said GM, Ford and DaimlerChrysler would keep losing market share because of their failure to deliver cars people wanted to buy while Asian and European producers would boost their presence with more reliable, affordable and better designed cars.