While it seems that nothing short of a miraculous jump in car sales would persuade some that the UK government’s scrappage scheme could be described as a success, June’s new car registrations have shown that there has at least been some positive impact from the action taken, with the figure continuing to fall, but at its lowest rate in 12 months. 176,264 new cars were registered in the month, meaning a fall of 15.7 per cent in comparison with last year’s sixth month; a figure which may leave some perplexed as to why this is such a positive sign. However, there is a strong case for adding the word “only” to the beginning of that figure, seeing as this is the lowest dip into negative figures since July 2008 and that year-to-date demand has fallen proportionally two-thirds as much again, at 25.9 per cent. Therefore it would be churlish to say the scheme has had negligible impact, especially since this slowing of the downward spiral has taken into account only the first few weeks of the scheme’s inception.