New car sales for the first 10 months of this year have already exceeded those for all of last year, when the scrappage incentive was still in place. Between January and October there were 140,053 new registrations, compared with 136,600 for all of 1997.
Motor industry analysts now expect the final sales for the year will be about 145,000 new cars. New car sales for October, however, were down by 11 per cent, 6,424 compared to 7,273 in the same month last year. It was in the final three months of 1997 that registrations boomed because the scrappage scheme was coming to an end.