Top 10 fastest disappearing cars from the 1990s

New research has revealed that the Top 10 best-selling cars from the decade of ‘Cool Britannia’ are vanishing from our roads at an alarming rate.

In 1993 the Mk5 Ford Escort was Britain’s best-selling car. It sold 122,002 units that year, but now there are just 460 of those left on the road. That’s a survival rate of 0.37%.

It’s a similar story with the Mk3 Fiesta, which was second in the best-sellers list with 110,449 finding new homes in 1993. Now just 435 of those are still on the road – a survival rate of 0.39%.

In fact, none of the Top 10 best-selling cars from 1993 has a survival rate of more than 1% – that means 99% have been crushed.

The startling statistics have been uncovered by Honest John Classics which used the latest vehicle data to give readers a figure of how many cars from the 1990s are registered – both those on the road and those off the road, plus those that have been scrapped.

But why are so many of the cars from the 1990s endangered species? There are several reasons, but one of the biggest is the 2009-10 scrappage scheme when the Government encouraged people to trade-in cars more than 10 years old for £2,000 off a new car – a discount that you could’ve got by haggling. In total, 392,227 future classics were taken off the road because of the scrappage scheme.

For example, 2,613 Rover 400s were taken off the road in 2016 – that’s 20.8% of the total number left. At the current rate of extinction, they will all be gone in five years.

It’s a similar story for the Vauxhall Cavalier and Citroen Saxo. Once beloved of sales reps everywhere, 10.2% of 1990s Cavaliers have been scrapped. While the Saxo, which defined modified motoring for the Max Power generation saw 2505 destroyed – 24.1% of the total left.

Top 10 fastest disappearing 1990s cars

Make and Model	Number on the road in 2015	Number on the road in 2016	Number scrapped	% change
Ford Fiesta	80519	62549	-17970	-22.3%
Vauxhall Corsa	57381	44022	-13359	-23.3%
Vauxhall Astra	60996	47771	-13225	-21.7%
Volkswagen Polo	45051	35888	-9163	-20.3%
Ford Focus	35257	26478	-8779	-24.9%
Renault Clio	35257	26478	-8779	-24.9%
Peugeot 206	16181	11969	-4212	-26.0%
Rover 400	12546	9933	-2613	-20.8%
Nissan Almera	10840	8252	-2588	-23.9%
Citroen Saxo	10375	7870	-2505	-24.1%
Vauxhall Cavalier	7760	6969	-791	-10.2%

Top 10 selling cars in 1993 (and their survival rates)

Position	Make and Model	Number sold in 1993	Number remaining in 2017 (taxed and MoT’d)	% survival rate
1	Ford Escort	122,002	460	0.37%
2	Ford Fiesta	110,449	435	0.39%
3	Vauxhall Astra	108,204	906	0.84%
4	Vauxhall Cavalier	104,104	573	0.55%
5	Ford Mondeo	88,660	322	0.36%
6	Rover 200	77,745	508	0.65%
7	Rover Metro	57,068	249	0.44%
8	Peugeot 405	52,184	250	0.48%
9	Vauxhall Corsa	51,608	443	0.86%
10	Renault Clio	45,269	220	0.48%
Total	N/A	817,293	4,366	0.53%