Ford's domination of the UK car market across all sectors is apparent. But you only have to look back a few years to see how the pattern has changed.

In the early 1990s, Ford had a 25% share of the UK car parc VIO, or Vehicles In Operation.

Vauxhall and Rover dutifully played follow my leader with 16% and 14%. While Vauxhall has stayed remarkably consistent throughout the last decade, the decline of Rover and the growth of Peugeot, Renault and Volkswagen is clearly demonstrated.

By 1997/98, Rover's share of VIO had slipped to 5%, Renault had shot up from 3% to 8% and VW had grown from 5% to 7% while Peugeot had secured third spot behind Ford (down to a 17% share) and Vauxhall. This change in the UK's car hierarchy is also reflected in the VIO breakdown by model. There were 24,701,201 cars on the UK's roads at the time of this analysis with Rover's 200 in fifth place. But in the VIO for models less than one year old, Rover has slipped completely from the top 10 as has Nissan's Micra.