Ford's Fiesta maintained its reign as Britain’s best-selling car during 2017 despite volume brands enduring the brunt of falling new vehicle registrations in 2017.

Ford’s overall new car registrations fell by 9.71% to 287,396 in 2017 as volume rival Vauxhall saw its registrations plunge 22.24% to 195,137 and fellow PSA Group brand Peugeot endured a 16.55% decline to 82,226 registrations across the year.

Topping the percentage volume declines in 2017, Vauxhall’s loss of over 55,000 sales were the most dramatic.

However, Fiat suffered the similarly thumping loss of 26.59% of its 2016 total, with registrations of 44,475, while Renault finished the year 18.79% down with 69,110 registrations and Mazda was 16.3% down at 39,092.

Ford's new Fiesta maintained it's reign at the top of the year's best selling models as Volkswagen new Polo and Golf models also slotted stratight into 2017's top ten.

Although not represented among the year's top ten sellers, Seat was among the manufacturers to buck the market decline with an impressive 18.28% rise to 56,130 registrations, while Suzuki experienced a 5.7% rise to 40,343 registrations and MG’s growing dealer network generated a 5.9% rise to 4,441 registrations.

Volkswagen's Golf and Polo sales, meanwhile, helped it to perform best well among the volume brands in terms of maintaining volume in 2017. Toyota registered a 5.42% registrations rise to 101,985 to top the volume brands growth race, but the German manufacturer was able to record a near-flat performance compared to 2016 with registrations of 208,462 vehicles representing a 0.69% increase which saw the brand’s market share rise 5.2ppts from 7.69 to 8.21.

Premium brands continued to show sales growth, however.

While BMW ended the year 4.1% down on 2016 with 175,101 registrations, Mercedes-Benz (180,970), which saw a 6.56% rise, Porsche’s 7.28% increase (14,051) and the gains of Jaguar (35,544) and Land Rover (82,653), respectively, all celebrated growth.