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Ask almost anyone in the
business as to where most exports of German-made cars were heading in the main
and more often than not the answer is the US or China. Wrong!
Last year the greatest number of German-made cars ended up on Britain’s shores.
That’s no fewer than 689,437 cars, which beats year earlier passenger car
shipments to Britain by some 6.3 per cent, according to figures from the VDA,
Germany’s autoindustry federation.
By way of comparison, last year’s exports of German-made cars to the US rose
18.8 per cent to 624,557, accompanied by some 284,704 car shipments to China.
689,437
Number of German-made cars
ending up on Britain’s shores last year
Apart from “1966 and two
world wars”, an all too familiar chant from England supporters at international
football games between England’s and Germany’s national football team, there are
no two ways about it: Brits still love German cars.
VDA
supplied car export figures for last year, excluding cars sold in the UK by
Volkswagen, BMW and Audi for instance, but sourced from non-German plants,
already accounted for one-in-three of last year’s UK new car sales.
That’s 689,437 of the 2.04 million new cars sold in the UK last year.
But that’s not all, because to that can be added the cars sold in the UK by
German owned brands that were not built at German plants.
An example would be that virtually all the Polos sold by VW in the UK last year
were built in South Africa.
Likewise, BMW’s X3s and X5s came from the US, whilst all of Audi’s A1 were
assembled in Belgium...more
MORE
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