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Explore the UK new car buyer market by group: who enquires, who goes on to buy, and how the fuel, body and price mix shifts along the way. Built from our own data.
Affluent Established Families
Wealthy households, including high earners in cities and large suburban family homes. Most own their home.
Prosperous Rural Families
High-income families living in rural areas, usually with larger homes. Almost all own their home.
Comfortable Retirement Homeowners
Retired or older working people who own their homes, ranging from wealthy rural households to modest pensioners.
Mainstream Family Suburbs
Working families on middle incomes, living in mortgaged homes in suburbs and small towns.
Modest Older Independents
Older single people and couples on average incomes, mostly settled homeowners.
City Flat Singles
Single people and couples living in urban flats, most of them renting.
Stretched Family Renters
Younger families on lower incomes, living in rented homes.
Low-income Later Life
Older households on low incomes, most of them renting.
Students and Sharers
Students and people early in their careers, living in shared or short-term accommodation.
01
UK new car buyers grouped into nine segments. Select a group in the treemap, or from the dropdown, to see how it behaves.
Buyer groups by share
Inside Group 1
02
The fuel, body and price mix each group is choosing, and how that mix is shifting.
Share of enquiries vs sales
Mix shift — Whole market
Swipe the chart sideways to see the full mix.
Segment
The best converting segment is Comfortable Retirement Homeowners at 39% of sales, converting well above its enquiry share at +8.8pp, a 0.3pp rise from last month. Stretched Family Renters converted furthest below (-3.7pp), the weakest of any segment.
Body style
Hatchbacks are still the largest segment despite percentage of sales dropping by 3pp since the previous month (38% of sales), though it's Compact SUVs that performed highest over index against its enquiry share (+5.9pp).
Price
Purchases concentrate on £30-40k (40% of sales), which is also the best-converting band, over-indexing versus enquiries by +4.9pp. £80k+ under-indexes the most (-6.6pp) against enquiries.
Fuel
Petrol Hybrid remains the most popular fuel type (50% of sales), and is also the best-converting, over-indexing versus its enquiry share by +4.4pp. Electric converted worst (-3.2pp).
Based on the groups where we have matched lead-to-sale data (BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Nissan), over a 24-month maturity window. Enquiry fuel mix is an approximation: the source enquiry data is oriented by fuel type, so hybrids are combined and each group's mix re-normalised to total 100%. Body, price and sales figures are per group as supplied.
03
The purchase route buyers take, from outright cash to finance and leasing. Every bar totals 100%. Switch the view to break the split down by segment, body style, fuel type or price band.
Purchase route by segment
Swipe the chart sideways to see the full width.
PCP = personal contract purchase, PCH = personal contract hire (personal lease), HP = hire purchase, BCH = business contract hire. When grouped, finance combines PCP and HP, and leasing combines PCH and BCH. Based on the same matched groups (BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Nissan) over a 24-month maturity window.
04
An opportunity map of every buyer group, plotting how strongly each over- or under-indexes as new car buyers against how much of our in-market enquiry demand they make up.
The new car buyer index measures how likely a group is to buy a new car compared with the average buyer. 100 is the market average. A score above 100 means the group over-indexes and is more likely than average to buy new; below 100 means it under-indexes. We plot it against each group's share of our in-market enquiries, so groups towards the top and right are the strongest new car opportunities.
Opportunity map
The new car buyer index is benchmarked against the market average (100). Share of in-market demand is each group's share of TLA enquiries. Groups sit in Invest & grow when they have both an above-average index and an above-average share of demand; all others are a Niche opportunity. Bubble size reflects share of in-market demand.
05
Incremental buyers switching from another brand, loyal buyers returning, and buyers new to the market on the left, and how each splits across fuel, body and price. Click a loyalty status to isolate it, and switch the view by category.
Loyalty flow by fuel type
Swipe the chart sideways to follow every flow.
Incremental = buyers switching from another brand, Loyal = returning to the same brand, New to market = first-time or returning-to-market buyers. Percentages show the loyalty split within each category. Price-band flows are volume-weighted using the overall loyalty mix (Incremental 63.1%, Loyal 29.9%, New to market 7.0%); fuel and body categories are shown at equal width because the source gives the loyalty split within each category, not category volumes, so read those node widths as indicative.
06
How enquiry activity moves through the year, indexed so that an average month reads 100.
Monthly enquiry index
The index rebases each month's enquiry volume against the average month across the period, so 100 is an average month and the dashed line marks that baseline.
07
How the pieces of the deal have shifted over time, each indexed to a baseline of 100.
Affordability indices
Each series is rebased to 100 at Q3 2024, so the lines show movement relative to that quarter rather than absolute values. Deposit affordability, part-exchange, price and finance gap are quarterly indices across all OEMs.
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