(Thu 04 Feb 10)

Having led the UK registrations for every month of 2009, the Ford Fiesta has continued the trend into 2010 by taking the number one spot in January, according to figures released by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.

8885 Fiestas were registered last month, putting the supermini well ahead of Ford's Focus, which was second on 6953. Vauxhall maintained its traditional role as the second most popular make, though the Volkswagen Polo achieved fourth place among individual models, splitting the Corsa and Astra.

Further back, the fact that the Golf and the Peugeot 207 were sixth and seventh was a familiar enough story, but the rest of the top ten looks slightly unusual, with eighth to tenth places going to the Hyundai i10, Audi A3 and Fiat 500.

Hyundai, still the company to have sold the greatest number of cars under the scrappage scheme, also showed the most spectacular improvement over January 2009, with an increase in registrations of 285%. Other brands with improvements of over 100% were Jeep (203%) and Kia (195%). At the other end of the scale, Daihatsu, Saab, SsangYong and Toyota showed significant declines, while no Hummers or Corvettes were registered at all, and only three Cadillacs.

Overall, registrations were up by 29.8% compared with January 2009. That's partly because January 2009 was a terrible month, and partly because of scrappage. However, the SMMT gloomily predicts that once we get into the post-scrappage era, registrations will start to decline, and reach a total of just over 1.8 million (the lowest since 1993) by the end of the year.

Even at that, car registrations are doing better than those for commercial vehicles. The van market is relatively stable, with registrations 1.7% lower than in January last year, but the decline for trucks is nearly 50%.

The continued impact of the global economic downturn is very evident in the central and eastern European car markets. According to JATO Dynamics, the market there (which is dominated by Skoda, with the Octavia being by far the most popular individual model) fell by 28.1% from 2008 to 2009. The only country in the sector to remain stable was Poland, which experienced a 0.1% rise in registrations. Slovakia isn't doing too badly, with a fall of 4%, but registrations in Estonia, Hungary, Latvia and Lithuania fell by more than half.

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