Automotive Retail Data: Dealer Sales, Inventories, Footprints and the Vehicle Parc · Head-to-head
U.S. Census County Business Patterns - Automobile Dealers Establishments vs UK DfT Vehicle Licensing Statistics Collection (VEH01-VEH03)
Which automotive retail data: dealer sales, inventories, footprints and the vehicle parc data fits your job: U.S. Census County Business Patterns - Automobile Dealers Establishments, or UK DfT Vehicle Licensing Statistics Collection. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
U.S. Census County Business Patterns - Automobile Dealers Establishments
UK DfT Vehicle Licensing Statistics Collection (VEH01-VEH03)
Where the fields line up
No shared field names. These two answer different questions.
| Field | U.S. Census County Business Patterns - Automobile Dealers Establishments | UK DfT Vehicle Licensing Statistics Collection |
|---|---|---|
FIPSTATE | FIPS state code of the establishment location; the leading key of every geographic roll-up. | not in this set |
FIPSCTY | FIPS county code within the state; dashes on higher-level geographies such as state totals. | not in this set |
NAICS | Industry code up to six digits. Trailing slashes mark aggregation levels - 4411// is broader than 441110. Dealer lines: 441, 4411, 44111, 441110, 44112, 441120, 44121, 441210, and the 4413 parts stores. | not in this set |
EST | Total number of employer establishments in the geography-by-industry cell. | not in this set |
EMP | Total mid-March employment for the cell, after disclosure-noise treatment where required. | not in this set |
EMP_NF | Employment noise flag. G = less than 2 percent noise applied, H = 2 to under 5 percent, J = 5 percent or more. Read it before summing small cells. | not in this set |
QP1 | First-quarter payroll for the cell, in thousands of dollars, noise-treated like employment. | not in this set |
QP1_NF | First-quarter payroll noise flag on the same G/H/J scale as EMP_NF. | not in this set |
AP | Annual payroll for the cell, in thousands of dollars - the full-year compensation base behind per-head pay estimates. | not in this set |
AP_NF | Annual payroll noise flag on the same G/H/J scale. | not in this set |
N<5 through N1000_4 | Establishment counts per employment size class: fewer than 5, 5-9, 10-19, 20-49, 50-99, 100-249, 250-499, 500-999 and 1,000-or-more employees, with the top class split further (1,000-1,499 through 5,000+). N marks a class withheld as unavailable. | not in this set |
licensed vehicle stock by body type, fuel type and keepership | not in this set | documented |
Coverage, side by side
| U.S. Census County Business Patterns - Automobile Dealers Establishments | UK DfT Vehicle Licensing Statistics Collection | |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic | Nation, all 50 states plus DC and Puerto Rico/island areas, counties, combined statistical areas, metro and micro areas, places, ZIP code totals, ZIP industry detail, congressional districts | United Kingdom with England/Wales/Scotland/Northern Ireland and Great Britain splits; local authority rows in selected tables; 2021 LSOA geography in the largest CSV files |
| Temporal | Reference year 2023 latest release; downloadable CSV series back to 1986 (SIC-based before 1998); | — |
What each contains
Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| U.S. Census County Business Patterns - Automobile Dealers Establishments | UK DfT Vehicle Licensing Statistics Collection | |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | U.S. Census Bureau | Department for Transport with DVLA |
| Subject lens | Employer business census sliced to NAICS 4411 automobile dealers: establishments, mid-March employment, first-quarter and annual payroll, nine employment size classes | — |
| Geography | Nation, all 50 states plus DC and Puerto Rico/island areas, counties, combined statistical areas, metro and micro areas, places, ZIP code totals, ZIP industry detail, congressional districts | United Kingdom with England/Wales/Scotland/Northern Ireland and Great Britain splits; local authority rows in selected tables; 2021 LSOA geography in the largest CSV files |
| Temporal reach | Reference year 2023 latest release; downloadable CSV series back to 1986 (SIC-based before 1998); | — |
| Cadence | Annual | Quarterly snapshots plus annual, quarterly and monthly registration series; headline updates July, September, December |
| Grain of a row | One geography-by-NAICS-code cell with employment size-class breakdowns, to 6-digit NAICS where disclosure permits | — |
| Measured values | Establishment counts, mid-March employees, first-quarter payroll ($1,000), annual payroll ($1,000), establishments per size class | — |
| Data quality signal | Per-cell noise flags: G under 2%, H 2 to under 5%, J 5% or more; N marks unavailable size classes | Accredited official statistics with notes worksheets, cover sheets and a published index mapping withdrawn table numbers to replacements |
| Volume | County file 12.7 MB compressed covering all industries; auto dealer rows are a filtered subset; ZIP industry detail 284 MB | 28 ODS summary tables (15 KB to 16.6 MB) plus 12 CSV data files up to about 230 MB; df_VEH0125 alone roughly 900,000 rows |
Or take both in one feed
Yes - as twin baselines under one dealer-network model, not as a joined table. Anchor the U.S. side on CBP: establishments, employment and payroll for NAICS 441110 and 441120 by county and ZIP, with the G/H/J flags deciding which cells earn full confidence.
Join discipline, not luck: there is no shared key between the two, so normalize each to a common analytic frame first - dealers per million pounds of local payroll on one shore, vehicles per thousand residents on the other - before any comparison earns a chart. Respect the cadence gap (annual census against quarterly snapshots) and never splice a mid-year DfT quarter onto a CBP reference year without saying so.
Worked example: rank U.S. counties by new-car-dealer payroll density in CBP, then rank UK LSOAs by private-keeper car density in df_VEH0125, and read both league tables as one network-expansion story. Or take both in one feed. Delivered together, typed consistently, on the cadence you set.
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Fair questions
Which dataset covers more geography?
Neither crosses the Atlantic, so depth decides. CBP publishes the nation, all 50 states plus DC and island areas, counties, combined statistical areas, metro and micro areas, places, ZIP code totals and industry detail, and congressional districts. DfT covers the United Kingdom with country splits, local authority rows in selected tables and 2021 LSOA codes in its largest CSV files.
Do the two datasets measure the same thing?
No. CBP measures the retail business: how many dealer firms exist in a geography, how many people they employ at mid-March, what payroll they pay annually. Firms versus fleet.
Can I join County Business Patterns to the DfT VEH tables?
Only through modeling, not keys. There is no shared geography, no shared classification and no shared unit. Analysts bridge them by ratio: CBP's establishments-per-payroll-dollar benchmarks a U.S. territory while DfT's vehicles-per-LSOA benchmarks a UK one, letting one dealer-network model run both markets with two calibrated inputs.
Which should a dealer-network analyst sample first?
Sample both, pick by fit. White-space mapping, franchise territory sizing and payroll benchmarking across U.S. counties start with County Business Patterns. Parc sizing, fuel-mix tracking and model-level demand curves start with the DfT VEH tables. Either record samples on request.