The Best-Selling Vehicle at TTAC Is Once Again the Best-Selling Vehicle in the UK

The Ford Fiesta is the most popular car at TTAC.

We don’t mean to say that TTAC’s audience researches the Ford Fiesta more often than any other vehicle. Nor are we suggesting that the Ford Fiesta is the consensus favourite among TTAC’s vast contributor network. Rather, there are a total of three Fiestas spread across TTAC driveways: the managing editor’s 1.0-liter EcoBoost, an ST at the home of our advice columnist, and another ST in the family of TTAC’s editor-at-large.

That’s an impressive level of marketplace penetration for a car that generates just 0.3 percent of the U.S. auto industry’s new vehicle sales volume. Yet across the pond, the very same car owns an industry-wide 4.5 percent of the overall new vehicle market.

2016 will be the eighth consecutive year in which the Ford Fiesta claims the title of the United Kingdom’s best-selling vehicle. Not only is the consistency remarkable, so too is the authority with which the Fiesta scores its victories.

2016 is not yet over, but the results published by the UK’s Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders through the end of November reveal an insurmountable margin between the Fiesta and second-ranked Vauxhall Corsa. The 39,155-unit gap shows that the Fiesta sells more than 50 percent more frequently than the rather popular Corsa.

Although the Fiesta is now at the tail end of its sixth-generation, this streak as the UK’s best-selling car — a streak that began in 2009 — continues apace.

But this isn’t merely the continuation of a Fiesta streak. A decade-long run for the Ford Focus ended in 2008. Indeed, including 2016, Fords of one kind or another have risen to the top of the UK auto sales charts in 45 consecutive years.

UK auto sales are reportedly up 2.5 percent in 2016, which is likely to be the fifth consecutive year of volume growth and the second consecutive record year. Concerns over Brexit have not yet had a measurable impact on the number of cars Britons are buying, although concerns from manufacturers operating in the UK have resulted in dire warnings about the near future. Ford UK’s Fiestas are sourced from two European Union countries: Germany and Spain.

The seventh-generation Fiesta goes on sale in the UK in July 2017, but not until Ford has closed the books on a 2016 calendar year during which Ford brand sales have so far fallen 5 percent. The Fiesta and Focus, the latter currently positioned as the UK’s third-best-selling car, currently account for six out of every ten Fords sold in the UK. With 12 percent market share, Ford is the UK’s top-selling auto brand.

The Volkswagen Group’s six brands – Audi, Bentley, Porsche, Seat, Skoda, Volkswagen — own an industry-leading 19 percent market share, though Volkswagen Group volume is down 1 percent this year.

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.

[Image: Ford of Britain]