The UK commercial vehicle market looks calm on the surface, but riptides of change have been sweeping through sales of vans, trucks, buses and coaches. Surprising. This is the word that crops up most often as marketing experts review last year's UK commercial vehicle registrations. Yet headline statistics compiled by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders seem at first glance to be pointing to anything but bombshells, with the truck market above 3.5 tonnes gvw hardly changed from 1998 (down by only 2.2 per cent), the bus and coach market growing by a modest 7.6 per cent, and light van sales totals almost identical to those of the previous 12 months. The real surprises are revealed only when the gloss of these global figures is scratched away to expose some underlying detail.
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