Ford should be just about winding up Fiesta production when this article is published, which would have been inconceivable two years ago. Even with the state of the 2020 market, it was still the UK’s best-selling car that year, as it had been since 2014, when it overtook its big brother, the Focus.
In its pomp in the mid-2010s, Ford’s supermini was shifting more than 130,000 units a year, although you could chalk up a portion of that to discounted pre-registration and rental deals – despite executives’ repeated claims to the contrary. Sales fell to 25,070 in 2022, which was just enough to secure it last place on the year’s top ten best-sellers list.
It is a similar story for the Focus, which had reigned as the UK’s best-seller until it was deposed by the Fiesta and was a mainstay in at least the top five until 2021. It is hanging on in there for now, but 2025 will be the final curtain for the formerly evergreen lower-medium hatchback.
That is partly a reflection of the wider new car market, which tumbled by 40% from its peak of 2.69 million units in 2016 to 1.61m in 2022. It is also because the semiconductor shortage hit Ford like a sledgehammer; the manufacturer simply was not prepared and has yet to recover. In January, president and CEO Jim Farley admitted it “should have done much better” in 2022, after it posted losses of $2bn, $47m of which were in Europe, and hinted that it could cut its passenger car line-up further.
We also lost the Mondeo almost exactly a year ago, although the demise of what was once the company car driver’s favourite was easier to see coming, because sales of non-premium upper medium, or D-segment, models had waned for a long time.
It looks as though we are picking on Ford here, but it is simply the most high-profile example of a wider disappearance of models once staples of the company car park. In fact, some of them might still be, given the number of contract extensions over the last three years. It is worth delving into the reasons why to better understand what will be available to fleets in future.
First, the easy bit. The Mondeo was axed because of the popularity of other, more fashionable body styles and its naff residual values. We could not say precisely when the BMW 3 Series, the Audi A4, and the Mercedes C-Class came within reach of those who might previously have gone for a top-spec Mondeo, but whenever it was, the writing was on the wall for the Blue Oval’s mid-sized saloon/hatch/estate and its contemporaries.
Sales continued overseas, but the Vauxhall Insignia lasted about a month longer than the Mondeo in the UK. The Mazda6 soldiered on a while longer, until the company announced the chop in January 2023. SUVs obviously have a huge role to play, and the Nissan Qashqai’s position at the top of the 2022 sales chart says it all.
Small cars, such as the Fiesta, are more complex, but the main reason they are drying up is because they do not make money. That has long been the case, but manufacturers took the hit for the sake of market share and to build brand loyalty, gradually luring customers into bigger, more expensive models with greater profit margins.
Regulation is making it even less economically viable to build small cars with internal combustion engines. The EU and UK government fine of ?95 per new car registered for each gram of CO2 above 95g/km of a manufacturer’s fleet average kicked in proper in 2021.
That did not help, but manufacturers are up in arms about Euro 7 regulations, due to take effect in the EU in July 2025. They say the research and development costs to reduce emissions of ICE vehicles to desired levels will add little material gain at a time when the industry is heading towards a ban on petrol and diesel engines. Some OEMs have claimed it could add almost £2,000 to a new car.
Then there is the far from insubstantial cost of tooling up to mass-produce electric cars, which has been Ford’s line for its reasons behind culling the Fiesta and the Focus. Electric city cars and superminis from established manufacturers do exist – think the Peugeot e-208, the Vauxhall Corsa-e, and the Mini Electric – but their business case is currently even slimmer than that of ICE equivalents, because battery tech is expensive, and you have to shoehorn it into a compact, non-purpose-built model.
Finally, the wayward nature of the wider economy over the past three years was bound to have an effect.
Ford is not alone, because even the multi-brand groups, skilled at economies of scale with their shared parts and platforms, have gone the same way with their smallest models. You can still order a new Volkswagen Up (including the electric e-Up, but only from stock – VW is not taking new orders), but its Seat Mii and Skoda Citigo equivalents are long gone. The same goes for the Citroen C1 and the Peugeot 108, while the Toyota Aygo X still exists. It was never as diverse, but you cannot buy a Vauxhall Adam anymore, either.
Small- and medium-sized are obviously still available from heavy-hitting manufacturers, and neither Vauxhall nor Volkswagen have announced plans to kibosh the Corsa/Astra or the Polo/Golf. However, you only have to look at the past two years’ best sellers lists to see where things are going.
Hatchbacks made up six of the top ten best sellers in 2021, with the Corsa comfortably in first place. The others were the Mini (third), the Mercedes A-Class (fourth), the Volkswagens Polo and Golf (fifth and sixth), and the Toyota Yaris (tenth).
There were two less in 2022’s top ten, and all of those were further down the chart. The Corsa fell to second place behind the Nissan Qashqai, the Mini was fifth, the Golf eighth and the Fiesta tenth. Everything else was an SUV.
A manufacturer selling electric SUVs at reasonable prices with sensible delivery times is going to do well – see MG for details. It sold 4,441 cars in the UK in 2017 and had a 0.17% market share. In 2022, it was the 13th best-selling brand, with 51,050 units – up 66.83% on 2021 – and a 3.16% market share.
Yes, it sells other body styles and fuel types, but its range is spearheaded by the MG4 EV, the MG ZS EV, and the MG HS Plug-in Hybrid. The latter is the priciest of the three, at £31,095 at the time of writing and, including the cheaper ICE version, it was also the UK’s best-selling car in January 2023. Curiously, the MG5 – one of a minority of electric estate cars on sale in the UK – outsold its electric SUV stablemates in 2022 and became the eighth best-selling battery-electric car of the year.
Consider all of the above, that the starting price for a Focus was £27,060 at the time of writing, and that it was outsold by the Puma SUV – the UK’s fourth best-seller in 2022, with a starting price of £24,920 – and there is no doubt that SUVs have ousted lower-medium hatchbacks from the mid-level of the market.
Upper-echelon plug-in cars are already the go-to for user-choosers with a generous choice list – your Teslas, Polestars, Porsche Taycans, and many others have that well and truly covered – but the gradual recession of city cars, superminis and, to a degree, lower-medium hatchbacks, is limiting choice at the affordable end of the spectrum.
Good equivalents still exist, such as the Hyundai i10, the Kia Picanto, and the Toyota Yaris, but they have never sold in the numbers that Ford’s market leaders did in their heydays. Manufacturers that can still justify building small cars will be rubbing their hands together with glee, because they will become the go-to replacements, at least for the time being – but that is assuming they can meet demand.
Unless an OEM boffin cracks the business case, there’s not going to be a swarm of cheap and cheerful small, internal-combustion-engined cars eager to fill the gap. It does, however, present an opportunity for the many Chinese EV-only brands, such as BYD, Nio, Wey, or Xpeng, among others. Most of them are focused on SUVs, but if one decides to bring an affordable electric small car to the UK, then there is definitely space for it. BYD, for example, is gearing up to launch the Seagull in China – a compact electric hatchback which, in its home market, will sell for less than £13,000.
It is not here yet, though, and it is little help if your business is not ready to go full-EV. Fleets have told us before that they liked the Fiesta – both the passenger car and the van version – because it was no fuss, you knew exactly what you were getting, and, crucially, it was cheap. The Corsa and the Polo arguably do as good a job, but consider this: if Vauxhall and VW pull the plug, and Honda ditches the Jazz, then a lot of public sector fleets could be up a gum tree.
