- Volkswagen and Ford dropped more than 4,000 units each in the month compared with the same time last year.
- VW remains the UK’s best-selling brand both for the month and year-to-date.
- A Chinese brand car topped the new car sales chart for the firs time – the Jaecoo 7
- Good EV sales figures strongly influenced by plate change.
BOTH Volkswagen and Ford had an horrendous March for new car registrations. The brands dropped more than 4,000 units each in the month compared with the same time last year.
The drops mean they’ve given up market share not only in the biggest month of the year but at a time when new entrant brands are making significant headway into the UK car market.
In Ford’s case, the fall was tempered by stronger registrations in January and February, so its first quarter total is ‘only’ down nearly 2,000 units.
VW remains the UK’s best-selling brand both for the month and year-to-date, but its leadership has been significantly eroded because it was already suffering in January and February. Market share for the first quarter of 2026 for VW was down more than 1.5 percentage points to 7.6%.
The wider VW Group, including Audi, SEAT, Skoda and Cupra now accounts for 19.2% of UK car registrations against 20.8% in Q1 2025. However, SEAT also recorded a drop which was broadly countered by a rise in Audi’s market share.
Chinese brands enjoy bumper March
At the other end of the charts from Volkswagen and Ford, it was the Chinese brands that had the most success.
For the first time, a Chinese brand car topped the new car sales chart for a month. The Jaecoo 7 bumped the Ford Puma off the top with more than 10,000 registered in the first 26-plate month. The move was not surprising, as reported a month ago by Broker News Omoda Jaecoo had been pushing dealers into delaying registrations that month, so that March would look even better than it would have done naturally.
As a result, Jaecoo was, once again, the fastest growing brand in the UK for the year-to-date, up 15,677 units.
However, Jaecoo’s performance was predominantly down to that single model: the 7 made up 83% of Jaecoo’s registrations in March (and 85% YTD). By comparison, Ford’s Puma, the UK’s second best seller in March with 9,193 units, took 48% of the Blue Oval’s sales.
Jaecoo wasn’t the only Chinese-owned brand that performed well in March, or Q1. Chinese-owned brands took 19.2% of the March market and YTD they’re at 18.1%. A year ago, those same brands took 11.1% of the new car market in the first quarter.
In unit terms, Chinese brands were up nearly 47,000 cars in the first three months of 2026. That’s against a market that overall has risen 34,000 units. Obviously, that means it’s legacy brands which are suffering.
Alongside VW, Nissan and Peugeot were both down more than 3,500 cars, Fiat also dropped nearly 2,500 units.
March 2026 top selling models
Source: SMMT
Top 5 fastest growing brands YTD
Bottom 5 fastest shrinking brands YTD
1 Jaecoo 15,677
2 BYD 12,066
3 Chery 8,077
4 Omoda 5,855
5 Citroen 5,195
5 Seat -2,123
4 Fiat -2,472
3 Peugeot -3,518
2 Nissan -3,545
1 Volkswagen -6,162
How electric were EV sales?
The SMMT heralded March as the best month ever for pure EV registrations at 69,313 cars, but at 22.4% market share year-to-date (and 22.6% for March), that’s still less than two percentage points up on the same time last year and it’s below the total 2025 figure of 23.4%. And all this is set against a target of 33% for 2026.
What’s more, the gap between electric car registrations and the ZEV Mandate target is growing, not shrinking.
At the end of Q1 2024, the market was 6.5 percentage points adrift of the 22% target. This time last year we were 7.3 percentage points off the target and now we’re 10.6 percentage points off the 2026 target of 33%.
Retailers are reporting increased interest in electric cars thanks to rising petrol and diesel prices. However, with these only really impacting wallets from mid-March, any change in buyer behaviour isn’t likely to become apparent until the April new car registrations.
Philip Nothard, Insight Director, Cox Automotive commented:
“March delivered robust headline growth, with record EV volumes and overall registrations up around 6% YoY. This performance, however, has been significantly influenced by plate-change seasonality and intensified manufacturer and fleet activity, which have inflated both total demand and EV uptake. Beneath the surface, EV growth remains volume-led rather than share-led, with penetration still materially below mandated targets, highlighting a clear structural gap between market reality and policy ambition.”
Overall market: it’s been a strong March
March’s overall performance was strong against recent years with a rise of 6.6% to just over 380,000 cars for the month. March has now seen a rise every year since the start of the pandemic. However, you have to go back to 2011 and 2012 to find a total for the month that’s lower than this March.
Year-to-date the new car market is now up 5.9% on the same time in 2025.
Read our new car market analysis of February 2026 registrations
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Tristan Young is an award winning journalist with more than 25 years’ experience reporting on the automotive industry focussing predominantly on fleet and retail. As a self-confessed petrol-head, Tristan has a weakness for car classifieds. When he’s not writing about the automotive industry, he can usually be found outdoors with a small pack of border collies.
