UK: It’s Porsches for courses for car owners made in Chelsea

With its prestigious properties and upmarket department stores The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is renowned for its wealth. Now data from Aviva shows that the cars on the King’s Road fit the reputation, with sports cars and luxury motors a regular sight.

Aviva analysed car ownership data across ten key areas of the UK, including; Chelsea and Kensington, Manchester, Birmingham and Cardiff*. Among these places the wealthy borough has the highest proportion of Porsches (1.31%), Mercedes (7.41%), BMWs (6.88%) and Audis (5.89%). Porsches are nearly four times as popular and Mercedes three times as popular as many parts of the UK.

And if you add up the number of Porsches, Audis, BMWs and Mercedes in Chelsea it is more than double the amount of Fords – generally the most popular make of car on the road. In comparison, Norwich has twice as many Fords than the combined number of Porsches, Audis, BMWs and Mercedes in the London borough.

Size also matters with Chelsea having the highest proportion of large family cars (10.56%) and the lowest proportion of small family cars (27.50%). This compares to Cardiff which has 41% small family cars on the road and just over 5% large family cars.

But the high proportion of sports and executive cars has left many Chelsea pensioners off the road. Chelsea and Kensington has the lowest proportion of drivers over the age of 60 (10.45%) compared with Norwich which has the highest proportion (16.4%). And younger drivers are also staying off the King’s Road with less than 4% aged between 17 and 21. Exeter has the highest proportion of young drivers with over 14%, while Birmingham has over 11%.

The data also shows:

- Edinburgh has over double the proportion of 4x4s than Manchester (6.4% - 3.1%)
- Newcastle has the highest proportion of people carriers (6.2%)
- Exeter has the most old cars (41.3%) and the fewest new cars (16.6%)
- Glasgow has significantly more new cars than old (30.4% - 20.4%)
- Exeter is the only area that has more young drivers than old drivers (14.6% - 14.4%)

Heather Smith director of car insurance at Aviva said: “Chelsea and Kensington has a reputation for being a place where the rich and famous reside and their cars certainly match that image. With proportionally three times as many Porsches and four times as many Mercedes as other parts of the UK, it would be hard to miss one driving down the King’s Road.

“The rest of the UK tells a very different story, with small family cars being much more numerous and sports cars being more of a rarity – around 40% of the cars in Manchester, Newcastle and Cardiff are small family cars like a Ford Focus and a Volkswagon Golf, significantly higher than the 27% driving around Chelsea.

“And regionally there are further differences with Edinburgh having over double the proportion of 4x4s than Manchester and Exeter having the most cars over 10 years’ old. But the wealthy reputation made in Chelsea certainly appears true with the cars on show.”

The data also shows that Chelsea and Kensington has the highest proportion of petrol cars to diesel cars (76.4% - 22.6%). Exeter is the opposite with the highest proportion of diesel cars (66.4% - 33.1%)

*Aviva motor insurance data from the second half of 2012 analysed Chelsea and Kensington, Leeds, Norwich, Manchester, Edinburgh, Exeter, Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow, Cardiff. The data is based on the proportion of Aviva insured vehicles and drivers in each area.

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Notes to editors:

Aviva provides insurance, savings and investment products to 34 million customers worldwide.

We are the UK’s largest insurer with over 14 million customers and one of Europe’s leading providers of life and general insurance. We combine strong life insurance, general insurance and asset management businesses under one powerful brand. We are committed to serving our customers well in order to build a stronger, sustainable business, which makes a positive contribution to society, and for which our people are proud to work.

We are ranked as one of the UK’s top ten most valuable brands and Aviva Plc is in the top 10% of socially responsible companies globally in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index. In 2012 we invested £5.7m into our UK communities. One in three of our employees were involved in community investment activities which included giving nearly 30,000 hours.

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