Uk car sales worst August since 1966
Says this article. The figues are very poor, 63,225, down 18.6% year-on-year. But the SMMT's "lowest since 1966" is surely misleading. August is a weak month nowadays because the new number plates come into force in September and so people wait until then. Until 1999 however the new number plates came into force on August 1st, and only once a year (compared to twice nowadays) so August sales were huge, sometimes nearly a quarter of all new cars sold. Conversely July sales were very weak, e.g. 37,896 units in July 1998 compared with 505,308 in August 1998.So this is the worst August since 1999 is the correct claim and a sub-claim could be it's probably the worst December 1999 on a seasonally-adjusted basis and the worst August since about 1996. Perhaps the SMMT do seasonally-adjusted figures (I did the above calculations myself) but I can't find any.
posted by Matthew @ 9/04/2008 11:45:00 AM
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