The Broker News van reports are supported by
- September van sales dip by -2.1% in ‘new numberplate’ month
- Vauxhall van sales – where are they?
- But electric van uptake surges by 41.1%
- Toyota van sales in positive territory
ONLY eight out of the 27 LCV brands listed by the SMMT are in positive territory so far this year, which explains why the overall market is running nearly 10% down on 2024 following September vans sales data.
As with previous months, Stellantis’s four commercial vehicle brands are doing a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to the downturn.
Peugeot, Fiat, Citroen and Vauxhall are all down year-on-year and cumulatively account for more than 15,000 of the 26,000 unit drop the market has experienced year-to-date.
And within the Stellantis drop, Vauxhall is down more than 8,000 vans and is by far the worst performer of any van brand this year.
Stellantis, obviously, isn’t the only manufacturer with poor performance this year.
Renault, Mercedes and Volkswagen are also significantly down. This indicates that the overall market is under some serious pressure and with the LCV market performance closely linked to the wider economy, this is a worrying trend.
Is the reason Stellantis is down because there are no vans available?
Liam Nicholas, Director of Business Development, Vanaways
Electrification up 41%
With just three more months for LCV manufacturers to hit the Government’s 16% BEV share under the ZEV Mandate, September made good progress. However, it’s not likely to be enough to meet the target.
While September’s electric van sales were up 41% and the year-to-date figure is up 56%, the market is still only at a 9.1% BEV share this year.
Will we see further throttling back of ICE supply to me ZEV percentages? It’s certainly worth keeping an eye on.
September vans sales by fuel type
Source: SMMT
Toyota on the up
Toyota, however, is the only brand which has made significant in-roads to the commercial vehicle market year-to-date. The Japanese brand is up more than 4,000 vans so far in 2025. The surge has seen its market share go from 4.4% a year ago to 6.6% now.
Success is down to a range that has steadily grown in recent years giving Toyota access to a significant proportion of the market and, according to one retailer Broker News spoke to, Toyota’s brand reputation for reliability and value go down well with buyers.
Market leader Ford isn’t quite in positive territory for LCV registrations year-to-date, but it’s only 154 vans off this point last year. This figure was helped significantly by September’s performance which was more than 1,200 LCVs up on last year.
With the rest of the market slipping back, Ford’s near-static performance means it now has a 35.8% market share, up from 32.3% in the first nine months of 2024.
Also worthy of note for a strong September was Maxus, which more than doubled its monthly total to register nearly 2,000 vans and push it past the 2% market share for the year.
Top 5 fastest growing brands by volume YTD
Bottom 5 fastest falling brands by volume YTD
1 Toyota 4,282
2 Maxus 493
3 Land Rover 486
4 MAN 476
5 Farizon 60
5 Volkswagen -3,445
4 Mercedes -3,857
3 Citroen -4,095
2 Renault -4,105
1 Vauxhall -8,050
Photo by Joakim Nådell on Unsplash
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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.
We’ve had numerous requests for medium sized long wheel base panel vans for the logistics and couriers market, which you expect at this time of year, writes Liam Nicholas of Vanaways.
There’s a sweet spot in the price everyone wants to pay and there’s very limited availability at the moment on these vans. So, whichever courier company takes them, gets a head start for new routes and contracts. It’s further complicated by the fact that everyone wants them now with deliveries by month’s end. Given that it takes around 14 working days to ship from port, get them ply-lined, given a PDI and accepted for delivery, time is already running out.
For example, in the last two days I’ve been looking for more than 150 Dispatch / Expert / Vivaro / Scudo L2 panel vans in white.
I’ve managed to find 30 L2s from one source who tells me that’s all there is available in the UK and 50 from the same manufacturer with a different badge, echoing the same message.
Outside of these, though, what is available?
My information says there are no Renault Trafics until the end of November. Meanwhile Custom, Transporter, Vito, Proace, Primastar and Deliver 7 don’t hit the sweet spot from a price perspective to make it competitive and work.
So I’m curious. What’s the answer? Who’s got Stellantis vans we can buy in bulk?
If you’ve got stock, please send over what you have and we’ll get some deals done.