Over the next few weeks, vehicle dealerships will – at last – be open for sales once again (although it’s been okay to roam round your regional garden centre or go to an estate agent for a while) as well as much of the market is speaking about prospective incentives for buyers.
Alison Jones, manager of Peugeot, Citroen as well as DS in the UK, has gone as far as to say: “Customers may wait on a stimulus bundle before making a decision”, while Ford of Britain manager Andy Barrett said: “It’s Ford’s view that it’s necessary we have stimulus in the market to assist clients come back with confidence. That may be a scrappage plan or something similar.”
Exclusive: “no plans” for new UK vehicle scrappage scheme
But are incentives truly necessary? Vauxhall manager Stephen Norman will always provide it to you straight, so I chosen up the phone for a chat. “You might say, safely, that any type of single week’s business in the UK would be worth between 50-60,000 client orders,” he told me.
Advertisement – article continues below
“It is not important to have incentives to get to 60,000 per week, since 80 per cent of demand is for renewal, as well as that will come back anyway over time.
“It would, nonetheless, be a extremely nice accelerator.”
He continued: “We at Vauxhall would like to see that type of reward with a cap on suggested retail cost as well as particularly based on CO2. We would prefer to see a cap on RRP to ensure that more budget-friendly vehicles got proportionally the biggest incentive, as well as those that were more costly just got a flat rate – we’d put it at £30,000.”
We’re not sure Jaguar Land Rover would agree, however its UK manager has joined requires incentives.
The market does agree on the requirement to focus on low-CO2 models, though, with Norman saying, “On CO2 we’d have a moving scale; obviously we’d like to see considerable incentives on PHEV as well as battery-electric vehicles.”
As Norman told me, getting back to 60,000 vehicle sales per week will take time. support would assist that, together with the 800,000 people who work in the UK vehicle industry.
Do you believe government incentives are needed? let us understand your thoughts in the comments section…
