The firm’s data shows that October registrations improved year‐on‐year for the fourteenth consecutive month. A selling rate of 12.6 million units/year is the best result since November 2011. Many markets posted stronger selling rates, despite an increasingly gloomy economic outlook for 2015.

For October, UK sales surged once again as increasing confidence and attractive financing continued to support the market.

The German market gained, year‐on‐year, though its strength came thanks to business rather than private retail sales. The market should finish comfortably above 3 million units for 2014, with only modest improvement for 2015, in the face of weakening economic growth expectations, says LMCA.

The Spanish market continues to eclipse year‐ago levels, helped by a recovering economy combined with ongoing PIVE government scrappage support. That support is to be topped up once again, the sixth such top‐up of the scheme, and LMCA assumes further iterations of the scheme going forward.

The Italian market was also higher, though this comes in contrast to the increasingly gloomy near‐term outlook for the economy. While there remains potential for significant growth in Italian registrations due to a large and ageing vehicle fleet, ongoing concerns over job security and income growth will continue to hold sales back. The French market's selling rate fell from the September result, reflecting stagnating economic activity.

Looking ahead, LMCA said that while Eurozone GDP growth forecasts have been pulled back for next year, it continues to forecast ongoing car market recovery, albeit at a slowing pace compared to 2014.

This forecast reflects the more limited scope for growth of UK registrations in 2015, a market that has been the main driver for the region's recovery this year.