Today we’re excited to announce a brand new look for Motorway.
Our new brand includes a fresh, bold redesign of our website and a brand new logo, colour palette and typographic design.
Motorway has grown significantly since launching in 2017, and we now help thousands of customers compare offers for their car every day. For hundreds of professional car buyers we are now a major source of exclusive vehicle stock.
Our new brand reflects this growth and leadership in car selling with a confident and forward-thinking look.
The new design was developed in collaboration with Koto and is inspired by the iconic and enduring UK road signage system designed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert, first introduced in 1958 as the signage for the UK’s first motorway.
This signage system was groundbreaking in completely rejecting and replacing all road signs that came before, bringing with it a clarity and simplicity that had never been seen before by British motorists. It’s this futuristic, pioneering spirit that we hope to embody at Motorway as we seek to revolutionise the way we buy and sell cars.
In creating the Motorway identity, Koto took the Transport font used on road signs and elements such as the chevron, combining them with a modern, digital colour palette, photography and illustration.
Our in-house design team then developed these concepts and guidelines into a design system and component library that is now used across all of Motorway’s products.
We’re really proud of our new look, and would like to thank James, Tim, Tom, Courtney, Craig and the whole team at Koto that worked on this project with us.
Car thefts in City of London fall by a fifth (21%) in 2018 vs 2017
Five police forces in England and Wales have seen car thefts more than double in five years
Staffordshire Police recorded the largest increase in car thefts of any police force in England and Wales last year, with crimes up by more than a third (38%) on 2017 figures, according to analysis of GOV.UK data by Motorway.
The latest government data on recorded police crimes*, reveals that, alongside Staffordshire, four other police forces – Bedfordshire (27%), Thames Valley (27%), Surrey (22%) and Durham (20%) – saw car thefts rise by more than a fifth last year vs 2017.
Only seven police forces in England and Wales recorded fewer car thefts in 2018 than the previous year, with the City of London (-22%), British Transport Police (-12%) and Wiltshire (-11%) all reporting double-digit cuts in thefts.
Five police forces – British Transport Police (217%), Surrey (138%), Nottinghamshire (122%), Staffordshire (115%) and the West Midlands (114%) – have seen motor vehicle thefts more than double in the past five years.
Four in ten car thefts in England and Wales during 2018 were reported by the Metropolitan Police (30,752) and West Midlands Police (11,140).
The following table shows police forces recording largest rise and fall in car thefts in 2018.
Police Force
Number of car thefts in 2017
Number of car thefts in 2018
% rise in car thefts 2018 vs 2017
Staffordshire
1,332
1,831
37.5
Bedfordshire
1,054
1,342
27.3
Thames Valley
2,574
3,265
26.8
Surrey
1,257
1,537
22.3
Durham
631
760
20.4
Gwent
681
813
19.4
West Midlands
9,386
11,140
18.7
Derbyshire
1,055
1,252
18.7
Northumbria
1,411
1,667
18.1
Essex
4,216
4,915
16.6
London, City of
78
61
-21.8
British Transport Police
464
409
-11.9
Wiltshire
636
565
-11.2
Humberside
1,489
1,352
-9.2
Dyfed-Powys
211
195
-7.6
Merseyside
3,063
2,836
-7.4
Avon and Somerset
2,476
2,352
-5.0
Alex Buttle, director of Motorway comments:
“These troubling car crime figures suggest that over-stretched and under-resourced police forces are struggling to curb the rising number of car crimes, and in particular keyless car thefts.
“Advancements in anti-theft systems do not seem to be discouraging thieves, who are using a variety of ever-more sophisticated techniques to break into and start cars.
“The 21st century thief isn’t using a hammer to smash a window and hotwire a car. They’re armed with wireless transmitters, signal jammers and key programming devices, and can open car doors and start engines in seconds.
“The police can only do so much, and there is a responsibility on drivers, particularly those with highly desirable prestige motors, to check they are not being watched, to keep their car keys in a safe place away from windows and front doors, and to consider fitting a tracking device as an added level of protection.”
Smashing a window is passé. Modern car thieves use signal jammers and electronic devices to steal cars.
Notes to Editors
Methodology
Motorway.co.uk analysed the latest Police recorded crime data on www.gov.uk, updated on 25th April 2019, for 43 out of 44 police forces in England and Wales. Lancashire wasn’t included in the research due to the lack of a complete data set.
