German and British brands remain top of customers’ Christmas wish list, with VW’s brand image not dented too significantly by recent emissions woes, according to Motors.co.uk.

Premium cars came out on top in the annual survey, with 28.3% of respondents stating that they desired a German car, and Dermot Kelleher, director of marketing and business intelligence at Motors.co.uk, said that the fun survey showed that dealers must make sure they fill their forecourts with the right stock in 2016.

Motors.co.uk’s Christmas wish list survey put German brand’s on top, with 8.9% of respondents hoping for an Audi this festive season, the same number electing for BMW, Mercedes-Benz securing 6.2% of the poll and Volkswagen also featured in the top ten, with 4.3% of the votes.

British brands also performed well, at 18.1% overall, with Land Rover (8.8%), Jaguar (5.3%) and Aston Martin (4.1%) all making the Christmas wish list.

Ford (8.8%), Nissan (3.6%) and Porsche (3.3%) completed the top ten.

The most-wanted individual model this Christmas was the Range Rover, including Sport, Evoque and Vogue (5.8%), followed by the Porsche 911 (1.8%), Volkswagen Golf (1.8%), Ford Focus (1.8%) and Ford Fiesta (1.6%).

Kelleher said: “What’s interesting about this kind of research is that, even when you put a ‘money no object’ opportunity in front of consumers, many people will still go for more conventional choices, like the Dacia Duster, Citroën C1, Ford Fiesta and Kia Cee’d. 

“There is a serious lesson here for dealers as well. The key placing of Audi, BMW and Land Rover shows that the premium brands continue to appeal to the consumer. German and British models also remain front of mind with UK consumers. And, VW’s brand image doesn’t seem to have been dented too significantly by recent emissions woes.

“As we enter 2016, dealers need to fill their forecourts with the right stock to meet consumer demand. While our Santa wish list is good fun, we’d encourage our dealers to make use of the retail demand data we provide in The Eye (Motors.co.uk’s response reporting tool) and in our ‘What’s Hot?’ section in order to complement their own market intelligence and inform their stocking policies.”

Motors.co.uk’s survey – which attracted responses from 794 web users – also showed which options were most desirable to car buyers.

Parking cameras and sensors were at the top of 46% of customers’ wish lists. This was followed by DAB radio (19.8%), sat-nav (19.3%), hands-free or Bluetooth (9.7%) and USB ports (5.2%).