UK car manufacturing hits six-year high in 2013

UK car manufacturing hits six-year high in 2013

The car market in Europe may have been a painful place in 2013, but that hasn’t stopped UK car manufacturing continuing to grow, with 2013 delivering a total of 1,509,762 cars – the highest total since 2007 and up 3.1 per cent on 2012. That impressive total is made up from a wide variety of car manufacturers, from the volume producers like Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan, Toyota and MINI to smaller sales volume from supercar makers Aston Martin.

In fact the rate of growth and investment is so strong – moire than £2.5 billion in investment announcements in 2013 – that the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) are reporting that analysts believe the UK’s car manufacturing could break all-time records in the next four years.

Business Secretary Vince Cable said:

Today’s figures are another sign that the British car industry is going from strength to strength – with one vehicle rolling off a production line somewhere in the UK every 20 seconds.

Our success lies in the appetite from countries around the world for British cars. Around 80% of the 1.5 million cars we produced last year were exported – a testament to the diverse, high quality of British manufacturing.

The continuing rise of UK car manufacturing looks set to continue, and with strong growth in China – which looks set to become the UK’s biggest non-EU destination for cars – we should see exports, which actually declined 0.9 per cent in 2013, adding to the total in 2014.

By Cars UK