So says Andrew Jackson, head of analytics at Glass’s, who believes the market will see growth of less than 5% for the remainder of the year, following an increase of 7.7% in May registrations to 194,032 units.

Jackson said: ‘Last month indeed represented a marginal slow-down in registrations versus April, primarily due to more restrained fleet-sector growth. Looking at May’s registration figures in detail, Business registrations once again held the top spot for growth with 26.8%. Year-on-year this amounted to an additional 1,600 units to total 7,619 registrations for the month and 48,662 units for 2014, giving further indication of a strengthening economy and increasing ability and willingness of businesses to refresh or enlarge their fleet.’

Fleet registrations in fact grew by 6% YoY to 95,702 units whilst Private registrations delivered an 8% YoY growth which equated to 90,711. When looking at registrations by fuel-type, diesel- and petrol-fuelled registrations grew at 8.7% and 5.2% to total 91,577 and 86,535 respectively. Alternative Fuelled Vehicles (AFVs) recorded an enormous jump in registrations of 72.3%.  This gives a monthly total of 3,444, 1,445 units more than April 2013, and a significant increase of 6,881 units (56%) year-to-date.

Looking at the most popular models, Jackson continued: ‘Ford, Vauxhall and Volkswagen once again come out on top. Fiesta continues to be the nation’s favourite model overall with 9,450 recorded registrations, though this only represented a 1% growth versus May 2013.’ 

In at number two with 36% YoY growth in registrations was Volkswagen’s Golf. Vauxhall’s Corsa took third place with 6,536 registrations, though this still translates as a YoY loss of -1%, making it the fifth straight month of registration declines for the Fiesta rival. Ford’s Focus came in at fourth with 5,824 registrations, though more significantly, this was year-on-year representative of a -23% decline and begs the question of whether potential customers are now refraining from purchasing Ford’s C-segment competitor until the face-lifted version is launched?

Jackson concluded: ‘It’s clear that the market is booming, with business and private registrations growing at a rate we haven’t seen in a while, however registrations surpassing 2.4 million by a significant margin would be very surprising, hence I would predict an average monthly growth rate of less than 5% for the remainder of the year.’