Now's A Great Time For British Performance Car Brands

McLaren and Aston Martin both announced record sales this week, and they aren't the only British fast car brands doing well right now

Matt Robinson

05 Jan 2018

Now's A Great Time For British Performance Car Brands

For the UK’s major producers of fast, shouty cars, business appears to be booming.

First off, let’s take a look at McLaren. Woking just announced it sold a record 3340 cars in 2017, just pipping its 2016 effort of 3286 units. 2119 cars Sports Series machines (540C, 570S etc) were sold, while Super Series (650S, 720S) motors accounted for 1221 of the total.

Over at Aston Martin, the company experienced record year-on-year growth of 58 per cent in 2017. Gaydon sold more than 5000 cars (5117 in total) for the first time since 2008, mostly thanks to the new DB11 (below). With the new Vantage now on sale, the firm will no doubt beat that number in 2018.

Caterham is yet to reveal complete 2017 sales figures, but it announced last October that it had already surpassed its 2016 600+ record with two months to spare. Not bad.

Again, Lotus hasn’t given a 2017 figure, but last summer Hethel reported that it was finally back in the black with a £2 million profit for the previous fiscal year. The company’s relentless stream of tweaked versions of existing models is clearly working, as it experienced a 57 per cent surge in mainland European sales during that period.

God Save the Queen, etc.

Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.

Comments

I am live in the U.S, but go Britain!!

*May

You traitor.

It’s a shame MG can’t do the same, as it’s a household name like jaguar or Land Rover

#MakeMGgreatagain

I wish Tata would buy MG to join JLR as a more affordable brand. Imagine the cars they could build using Jaguar platforms and engines, but at a lower price…

MG’s bad? Should see Vauxhall’s market share drop this year

It’s the fact that emission bans are nigh that makes them want to juice everything they can,sadly

i thought that Jaguar was doing alright..
also i am hoping for TVR to become more mainstream aswell

I want TVR to do well, but not become mainstream. The madness is what gives TVR its charm

JLR is up about 20% overall. Mainly F-Pace sales

Congrats to McLaren and AM…may you guys continue to do more crazy and cool things

Cheers to all the British car brands, nice work lads!

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Glad to hear it! Specialist and performance cars might be the UK’s best bet after Brexit given that they tend to be less price-sensitive so tariffs would have less of an effect than on mainstream cars. Not to mention that it means more chance of me ending up working for one of these companies :D…

What about Noble ? Haven’t heard anything about them for ages

They only build the M600 rn, so you could probably count annual production on your fingers & toes. Still, they are still doing fine (M600’s must be quite profitable, and they definitely are selling them)

Whilst they don’t sell many cars a year, they do turn a profit. They’ve expanded their line-up with three models of the M600 and are doing quite well for themselves. The Carbon Sport is drool worthy.