What the CMA Scrapping Its 2000 Order Means for Every New Car Buyer

• The Competition and Markets Authority revoked the Supply of New Cars Order 2000 on 4 November 2026, ending 26 years of rules on how carmakers deal with dealers and fleet buyers.
• Gone are the bans on unjustified price discrimination between fleet buyers and dealers, on bonuses for pre-registered cars and on carmakers punishing dealers for their advertised prices.
• The CMA says new entrants and online selling have made the market more competitive, so a buyer’s best protection now is a written price and quotes from several dealers.

The Rulebook That Shaped Your Dealer’s Price Is Gone

The CMA signed its revocation order on 4 November 2026, and it came into force the same day. Clause 2.3 names the Supply of New Cars Order 2000, one of nine orders removed in a single instrument. The CMA’s own page for the order now carries the line “Revoked in 2026” and says the order “banned price discrimination, controlled pre-registration and prevented restrictions on price advertising”.

The Order never set a price a buyer pays. It governed the agreements between carmakers and their dealer networks, and the limits it set in those agreements no longer exist.

The CMA made the decision after a consultation that drew no objection to removing this order. Volkswagen, a carmaker, was the only launch respondent and it wanted the Order removed. After the CMA’s provisional decision of 12 August 2026 it received no responses on the cars order, and it made no changes to the proposed revocations.

The legislation.gov.uk page for SI 2000/2088 still shows the original 2000 text. The CMA order page and the signed Revocation Order are the documents that confirm the revocation.

What the Order Stopped Carmakers Doing

The Order was made on 31 July 2000 by the then Trade and Industry Secretary, Stephen Byers, and came into force on 1 September 2000. It followed a Competition Commission report titled “New Cars: A report on the supply of new motor cars within the UK”, published on 10 April 2000. That inquiry found 17 suppliers, each holding more than 1% of the market and together accounting for 94% of new UK car registrations, running distribution practices that produced higher prices and less variety of choice for private car buyers.

The Order applied to any manufacturer or importer with a 1% or more share of the market, and it did five things.

First, it made it unlawful to discriminate unjustifiably between fleet customers and dealers on discounts for the same or a similar number of cars over the same period. The Order defined a fleet as 25 or more cars registered as used by the same person. Carmakers also had to tell dealers at least every three months what terms and discounts they offered for a range of volumes. When the Director General of Fair Trading received a complaint, the carmaker had to hand over the details of its fleet agreements relevant to the complaint and explain in writing how the dealer terms were set.

Second, it banned discrimination against contract hire companies depending on whether they passed cars on to fleet customers.

Third, it stopped carmakers withholding supply from a dealer, restricting a dealer’s advertised price or giving a dealer preferential credit, discounts, bonuses or delivery terms based on the price that dealer advertised. A dealer that advertised a low price could not be punished for it.

Fourth, it covered pre-registered cars. The Order defined one as a new car that the carmaker or dealer had registered before the terms of its supply to an end user were agreed. Two cases were excluded: a car registered as its certificate of conformity was about to become invalid, and a car kept for at least three months. Carmakers could not pay bonuses, set targets or give preferred treatment to dealers based on pre-registered cars. They also had to publish every month, for each model range, how many pre-registered cars they had supplied and the gross income from them.

Fifth, it stopped carmakers from terminating dealers over sales targets unless cars bought from a dealer in another European Economic Area state counted toward the target, and from favouring dealers who did not sell such cars.

Why the CMA Says the Market No Longer Needs It

The CMA’s reasoning in section 17 of its final decision rests on one finding. It identified “significant entry and expansion of OEM suppliers in the UK and the emergence of online sales channels and platforms” and concluded the market is more competitive than in 2000, which reduces the need for the Order’s prohibitions and information requirements.

The evidence on new entrants came from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. SMMT told the CMA that imports from China, including Chinese brands, accounted for just over 1 in 100 new car registrations in 2020, more than 1 in 8 in 2025 and now approach 1 in 5 in the first half of 2026. SMMT’s registration data shows significant entry by new manufacturers including SAIC, Jaecoo, MG, Chery and BYD. The CMA also noted AutoTrader survey research from June 2026 indicating that consumers increasingly look at the newer brands.

SMMT’s September 2026 figures, which the page marks as preliminary, show the scale. BYD registered 68,405 cars in the first nine months of the year, a 3.93% share, against 35,604 and 2.26% a year earlier. Chery went from 1,300 registrations to 33,364. Jaecoo registered 58,737 against 18,170, and its Jaecoo 7 was the second best selling model of the year to September with 39,474 registrations and the best seller in September itself with 10,814. MG took 78,930, a 4.54% share. For background on how fast one Chinese group has grown, see our report on the Chinese car group selling nearly 1 in 15 new cars.

Volkswagen told the CMA that the Order pre-dated digital sales channels and online platforms, which Volkswagen considered had greatly increased transparency, expanded consumer choice and led to new entry. It also pointed to the UK Vertical Block Exemption Order 2022 and the Motor Vehicles Block Exemption 2023 as better tools for competition problems in the sector.

The CMA did not accept that part. It said the regulatory changes made after 2000 do not have a material impact on its assessment. The specific block exemption for new motor vehicles has gone, so those agreements are now reviewed against the same rules as other vertical agreements. The CMA then wrote: “In our view the current regulatory framework does not replicate the specific restrictions imposed by the Order.” In plain terms, the CMA accepts that the general rules do not copy what the Order did, and revoked it anyway.

What Buyers Lose, and Who Buys Most Cars

The practical loss is information and a check on carmaker behaviour. Fleet buyers, who are companies running 25 or more vehicles, took 1,000,509 of the 1,739,271 new cars registered in the year to September 2026, a 57.5% share. Private buyers took 695,965, or 40.0%. Fleet registrations ran 304,544 ahead of private ones. The Order tied carmakers to a test of whether terms for dealers were broadly similar in value to recent fleet deals. Without the ban on unjustified discrimination, a carmaker can give a large fleet customer better terms than a dealer buying outright, and the carmaker no longer has to justify the difference or give a regulator its fleet agreements after a complaint.

Pre-registration is the second loss. A pre-registered car is registered before a customer has agreed to buy it. The Order barred bonuses and targets tied to those cars and forced carmakers to publish monthly numbers. The duty to publish that monthly data has gone, and so has the legal bar on rewarding dealers for registering stock.

The third loss is the protection for discount advertising. A dealer that advertised a sharp price could not lawfully lose supply or favoured terms for doing so. That protection has gone too.

The CMA does not say prices will rise, and no evidence in its decision shows they will. Its judgment is that competition between carmakers, including newcomers selling online, now does the work the Order did.

How to Protect Yourself When Negotiating a New Car Price

Ask every dealer for a written price that shows the discount off list, any delivery charge and any dealer-fitted extras. Written quotes from several dealers for the same car are the plainest check on a price now that the advertising protection has gone. Our earlier report on the gap between dealer offers and real prices shows why the headline figure rarely matches the final one.

Ask whether the car has been registered before. Under the old definition, a car registered before a buyer agreed terms was a pre-registered car. The rules on those cars have gone, so the question is yours to ask before you sign. A car registered earlier is a different product from one that has never been registered, and the price should reflect it.

Once you hold the quotes, haggle dealers down with them. Look beyond the biggest names too. With Chinese brands approaching 1 in 5 registrations in the first half of 2026, the figure SMMT gave the CMA, a quote from a newer brand’s dealer or online sales channel gives you another number to put in front of a franchise dealer.

The Order covered how carmakers treat dealers. The revocation order lists nine orders, and none of them concerns your own contract with the seller.

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