While the UK economy as a whole has taken a battering over the past two years or more, the overall size of the passenger car tyre market has remained relatively stable, which is good news for the 4×4 sector too.

In 2010 the UK car, 4×4 and van tyre market totalled some 33 million units. There is always some dispute about the precision of figures like this – the argument usually focuses on questions like Where do you draw the line between 4×4 and four-wheel Navarro-style van? Do the figures include grey imports? How many part worn tyres are sold each year? and how do you know that?

But while you can determine what you define a 4×4 tyre as by product size, there will always be a degree of uncertainty when it comes to things like grey imports and part worn sales. The received wisdom is that annual part worn sales total something like 2 million tyres a year, but there is some support for the figure being considerably higher during 2009 and 2010 due to increased cost pressure on motorists during the credit crunch.