Chart Of The Day: 2015 Will Be Ford Fiesta's Seventh Consecutive Year As UK's Best-Selling Car
The Ford Fiesta is on track in 2015 to celebrate a seventh consecutive year as the best-selling vehicle in the United Kingdom. A streak which began in 2009 – following the Focus’s own tenure atop the leaderboard – appears completely secure now that the Fiesta has outsold its nearest rival by 19,000 units over the course of just five months.
The Fiesta is not a popular car by the standards with which Americans identify popularity. On this side of the pond, for example, the Ford F-Series is America’s best-selling line of vehicles, but the F-Series accounts for 4.3% of the overall auto industry’s volume. The Fiesta generates 5.3% of UK auto industry volume.
The Fiesta also outsells the second-ranked Vauxhall Corsa to the tune of nearly 1.5-to-1. The F-Series, on the flip side, isn’t even outselling the combined efforts of its nearest rival, the Chevrolet Silverado and its identical GMC Sierra twin so far this year in the U.S.
Then consider the fact the Fiesta is absurdly popular despite the fact that the third-best-selling car in the UK – and the Fiesta’s predecessor among top sellers – is sold right alongside the Fiesta on dealer forecourts.
The Fiesta is also on the rise. Although the UK auto market is up 6% this year, Fiesta sales are up just 1%. But the Fiesta is old, and the growth it has achieved through the first five months of 2015 comes after annual year-over-year increases in 2012, 2013, and 2014.
Timothy Cain is the founder of GoodCarBadCar.net, which obsesses over the free and frequent publication of U.S. and Canadian auto sales figures. Follow on Twitter @goodcarbadcar and on Facebook.
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The UK is a relatively small place with many narrow roads, high costs and for the vast majority of people a highly urbanized lifestyle. The Fiesta is a great choice for that market and deserves its high sales. For perspective, the UK's longest Motorway (aka highway) is the M6 at all of 225 miles. The US' longest interstate highway is I-90 at over 3,100 miles. The notion of attempting to put millions of F150s on the UK's roads is horrifying. They would be hard pressed to move about, let alone park!
I drive a Fiesta now. I have liked it, except for the Powershud-d-d-er transmission. Tall, small car is good in big cities. If they would only get rid of that transmission, I would get another one.
A thread above regarding the opinions of CAFE and the use of small vehicles is quite interesting. The reason behind the use of smaller vehicles in the EU has much more to do with infrastructure. If I lived in the EU I would not even own a mid size pickup as it is too large to use effectively. I would limit access for daily living. As for the expansion of the smaller Japanese and Euro vehicles has much to do with the energy problems of the 70s and the lack of quality US vehicles. The US also had mainly vehicles that were of little or no use to Japan or the EU, too large. So the Big 3 had nothing. The small US vehicles were disgusting as well. The Japanese and EU had vehicles to offer the globe in the 70s and the cost of labour to manufacture vehicles was less than the US. Japan and the EU had slightly differing methods for global expansion. The EU focused more on percieved prestige and the Japanese concentrated on daily drivers. The US missed the boat, so to speak in global expansion. The Big 2, not including the more or less non global Chrysler/AMC concentrated on global regional vehicle requirement/production and less on global models. This came later. To manufacture the cheap vehicles that the US wanted technology was not at the forefront of US vehicle manufacture. Now we see with CAFE the use of EU and Asian vehicle tech, to the point where you will even see more EU style commercial vehicles. The best way to manage the use of energy is to offer the energy at a price that will determine how it is used. Just having bigger does not always mean better. Does an upsized Big Mac meal make it better. It can still be merde.
This article makes me very happy I don't live in the UK. All these are penalty cars, IMHO.