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Thursday 28 January 2021 6:00 am  |  Updated:  Wednesday 27 January 2021 4:13 pm

Four charts which show what happened to the car industry in 2020

By: Edward Thicknesse

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Months of shuttered factories and enforced social distancing due to Covid-19 saw the fewest cars manufactured in the UK since 1984 last year.
Car factories such as Vauxhall's Ellesmere Port plant were shuttered for months due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Months of shuttered factories and enforced social distancing due to Covid-19 saw the fewest cars manufactured in the UK since 1984 last year.

Just 920,928 models rolled off production lines in 2020, the Society for Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said today.

That’s 29.3 per cent down on last year, when over 1.3m cars were built.

The worst of the damage came during last spring’s first lockdown, when production slipped to mere hundreds of cars a month.

SMMT chief exec Mike Hawes said the numbers were the “worst for a generation”.

Here are four charts which show the extent of the damage the industry suffered last year.

(Credit: SMMT)
(Credit: SMMT)
(Credit: SMMT)
(Credit: SMMT)

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