Brits now buy more BYDs than Land Rovers
I’ve been poring over the latest DVLA car registration data release, which came out a few days ago, covering the fourth quarter of 2025.
There are lots of fascinating trends in there, and I’d encourage you to go and have a look yourself.
But one thing that really caught my eye is that for the second quarter running, Britons bought more BYDs than Range Rovers. And, for the first time, more Chinese-made MGs than they did Mercedes.
It’s hard to overstate the scale of this transformation. In the last quarter of 2023, Brits bought around 20,000 Chinese cars. Fast-forward to the last quarter of 2025 and that has roughly tripled.
Meanwhile European incumbents, including century-old firms, have gradually seen their shares decline.
In some ways this is a distinctly British phenomenon, because most of Europe, and North America, has put up high tariffs for the import of Chinese cars, whereas the UK hasn’t. And on current trends we’ll likely buy more than a quarter of a million Chinese cars this year.
The lower price point of Chinese-made cars is undoubtedly a contributing factor here. But what’s interesting is there are clear signs of these trends shifting up to the premium end of the market as well.
On a stroll around the King’s Road last weekend, I was surprised at how many Xpengs I saw. As it turns out, around 400 of the luxury EVs, which start at around £50k, were sold in the last quarter of last year, a ten-fold rise compared to the first quarter.
Cars are one of the few areas in manufacturing where Britain still has a decent-sized industry – the sixth largest in Europe, by number of cars delivered.
We have, however, seen a sharp drop from around a million in 2023 to only three quarters of that in 2025. Should that trend continue, it may be another one of those industries we say goodbye to.