Mercedes pre-reg deals appearing on the market

MERCEDES-BENZ has been heavily pre-registering cars over the past few months leading to attractive discounts on nearly-new cars.

While pre-registration of new cars by the retail network is now not possible under the agency agreement which started at the beginning of 2023, that has not stopped the manufacturer from piling in.

Official figures released by the SMMT show that Mercedes sold 647 pre-reg cars in September and a further 170 cars in October – the most recent figures available.

Under the Supply of New Cars Order 2000, car makers must state their number of pre-registrations. According to the legislation, a pre-registration is a car that has been self-registered without an end user and then sold within three months. It is the sale, and the value of the sale, that is recorded in the official data.

For context, most brands don’t officially pre-register any cars. However, it is not uncommon for car makers occasionally to list between 5-20 pre-registrations – although in 2023, Nissan did record 289 pre-registrations in March.

Before September it was exceedingly rare for Mercedes to pre-register cars, with only two others for the rest of the year. And, in pre-pandemic 2019, when Mercedes had a market share of 7.43% and sold 171,823 cars, it recorded zero pre-registrations.