Carmakers pour on the incentives in effort to pick up weak Q1

The start of March may have been a little slower than usual due to winter storms, but dealers pushed ahead with their plate-change deliveries.

While February delivered a drop in registrations, as expected, March is also likely to be below last year’s strong performance.

Vauxhall may be facing uncertainty over the future of Ellesmere Port and plans to cull roughly one in three of its UK network sites (see news insight on page 6), but it was offering £500 worth of free fuel on all new 18-plate cars between March 9 and March 12. The free fuel deal was on top of any existing PCP offers and Vauxhall also put a Help to Buy scheme in place to tempt customers into showrooms with up to five years interest-free and free insurance on the Corsa. It could be a good way to battle Ford’s strong 0% offers on its Fiesta this month.

Seat stands out as the brand to watch for growth  year-to-date, with registrations up 17.5%, to 6,561 units, compared with the first two months of last year. Its finance offers are led by a 0% offer on its core model, the Leon, at £229 a month.

The new Arona and Ateca crossovers are also available with fairly low deposit levels, which could be easily offset with a used car part-exchange, and reasonable monthly payments at £219 and £249 respectively. That strong trio of models could see Seat’s network outperform the market when figures are reported at the start of April.

Jeep and DS are still struggling out of the blocks in 2018 with year-to-date performances down by 57% and 56% respectively, to similar 0.4% market shares at about 1,000 vehicles.

These declines will put pressure on March to pull things back for Q1 and the manufacturers are stepping in to help.

DS is offering a £2,800 deposit contribution on its DS4 1.2 Puretech when bought on PCP to get sales moving during the plate change. The DS 3 is also available for less than £200 a month with a fairly low APR, at 2.9%. Targets are likely to have been readjusted for DS to account for the drop in volumes, but Citroën’s new car registration growth of 4.7% can hopefully help  to support dealers if the standalone premium brand’s Q1 performance cannot work its way into the black.

Jeep is putting a large £8,500 deposit contribution towards the Cherokee Limited 2.2 Multijet, but for those unconvinced of the brand’s positioning in the market verses strong SUV competition, it could be seen as more of a sensible readjustment of the £40,085 asking price. The entry-level Renegade is available for less than £200 a month and it’s on a 2.2% APR, so this could also help limit Jeep’s Q1 losses.