Today we are exploring the car landscape of Scotland, including Glasgow and the Isle of Skye, following my trip there in July. As a reminder, the MG ZS topped the Scottish charts in July, ahead of the Kia Sportage, Peugeot 208 and Volvo XC40. Notice also the MG HS at #5 and #8 year-to-date. The Vauxhall Corsa remains #1 year-to-date but was outside the Top 10 in July.

The first impression and main takeaway when looking at the car distribution on Scottish roads is the prevalence of the MG brand. Numerous HS and ZS, as well as some MG 4 and MG 5 station wagons. The touristic nature of the areas I visited were admittedly weighted towards rental cars, which suggests MG vehicles are a big hit with rental companies.

The domination of SUVs is clear for all to see in Scotland, with already many examples of the new generation Toyota C-HR, as well as plenty of Nissan Juke and Qashqai. In the case of the C-HR I suspect here too a large part were rentals. There were surprisingly few Vauxhall Corsa, as well as some Vauxhall Mokka.

Glasgow car landscape, including the Hyundai Kona, Bayon and BYD Atto 3.

Other interesting models seen often were the Lexus LBX and Citroen C4, the LBX potentially a premium rental car option. There were very few Teslas but a lot of BMWs, notably the 1 Series.

A beautiful Riley. If any of you know the exact model type, please comment on this article to share it with us.

Our car for this trip was the Renault Captur (pre-facelift). A comfortable ride despite a reluctant manual gearshift, the Captur doesn’t feel like a crossover but like a regular car. This is a good thing as a lot of crossovers do feel like cars on stilts. The driving position is not too high, meaning in fact that the only crossover-like feature of the Captur is its looks.