Ford Fiesta is 2025’s most popular used car as hatchbacks dominate

All but one of the top 10 best sellers last year were hatchbacks; petrol remains clear favourite fuel

The Ford Fiesta remains the UK’s best-selling used car two years after it was axed, 303,090 examples having changed hands last year.

New data released by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders reveals the supermini accounted for 3.9% of all second-hand cars sold in the UK last year.

That reflects both its historic success – with a huge supply of them skewing the figures – as well as continued demand for small, affordable hatchbacks.

Yet the Fiesta remained a significant distance from its nearest competitor, the Vauxhall Corsa, of which 247,853 examples were sold. Next were the larger Volkswagen Golf (226,082) and Ford Focus (218,962).

Notably, all but one of the cars in the SMMT’s top 10 used cars for 2025 were traditional hatchbacks. The outlier was the Nissan Qashqai crossover, which landed in ninth place with 145,207 sales.

Although sales of new petrol and diesel cars have long been in decline, they continue to dominate the used market. Some 4.4 million used petrol cars and almost 2.6 million used diesels were sold last year, compared with 407,531 hybrids.

A total of 274,815 used electric cars changed hands, giving them a market share of 3.5%. Although far behind petrol and diesels, this represented a 45.7% increase compared with 2024 and a record for EVs.

This is only set to accelerate in the coming years, as EVs represent a rapidly increasing proportion of the new car market.