Nissan takes the crown
ALL hail Nissan’s Qashqai, named the UK’s best-selling car of 2022 this week — the first time a Britishbuilt vehicle has secured the top slot in 24 years — amid the worst total UK sales for 30 years. Restricted sales of 1.61 million — the lowest since 1992 following a 2 per cent fall — were the result of supply shortages of microchips and other key parts from locked- down China and elsewhere, said the society of Motor Manufacturers and traders.
this is about 700,000 cars fewer than were sold in pre- Covid 2019 when new car registrations exceeded 2.3 million. But electric car sales for the first time exceeded those of diesel, and are now second only to petrol.
And the UK did reclaim its position as europe’s second largest market, overtaking archrival France to secure the runnerup slot behind Germany.
priced from £ 26,045, 42,704 top- selling sunderland- built Qashqais were sold to UK customers ahead of the secondplaced Vauxhall Corsa ( last year’s best seller) and pure electric tesla Model Y in third. Qashqai sales for December alone stood at 3,506.
Unveiling a one-off celebratory golden Qashqai, Andrew Humberstone, managing director of Nissan Motor (GB) Ltd, which employs 7,000 people across Britain, said: ‘this is a landmark moment for a landmark car.’
the rest of last year’s top ten are: Ford puma; Mini; Kia sportage; Hyundai tuscon; VW Golf, Ford Kuga and Fiesta.
A UK car last held the top spot in 1998 with the Ford Mk 4 Fiesta supermini, when it was still built at Dagenham, essex.
But it was a commercial van — Ford’s transit Custom — which pipped the Qashqai to become the UK’s best- selling vehicle overall for the second year in a row with 42,762 registrations.
A large festive-season shipment of pure electric teslas in December meant elon Musk’s vehicles were the biggest- selling cars accounting for around one-ineight purchases that month, setting a new eV record at just short of a third of all sales.