Shocked by the rapid downturn in car sales over the last few weeks, a number of car manufacturers have stopped production altogether to avoid stockpiling a glut of cars that nobody wants.

After a 20 per cent fall in sales during the first nine months of 2008, Bentley has just announced it is stopping the Continental GT night-shift and introducing an extended Christmas shutdown from December 10 through to January 12 – that’s a whole month with no cars being produced. Toyota, Nissan, Ford, GM, Land Rover and Jaguar have also been forced to take similar measures.

It seems many potential buyers are being put off buying a new car by low trade-in prices. The UK’s leading luxury and performance car dealer Tom Hartley reckons used cars are worth a dramatic 30-35 per cent less now than they were 12 months ago.

Even cars like the Ferrari 599 GTB are feeling the chill. Hartley has a one-year-old, 10,000km 599 on offer at £159,950, some £70,000 less than it cost new (including options), while new Porsche 911 Turbos with delivery miles are available at around £10-15K off list.

Aston has been affected too, with six-month-old DBSs changing hands for £30-40K less than they cost new. A good source in the motor trade told evo that there are currently 1700 used Astons for sale around the world. We’ve even heard of a Veyron being sold in the UK for close to £650,000 – around £300,000 less than new.

Bucking the downward trend are classic cars – as long as they have perfect history and are well presented. RM Auctions recently sold a delivery-mileage McLaren F1 for £2.57m, some £1.1m over its pre-sale estimate, while a Ferrari F50 made £319,000 and a 288 GTO fetched £325,000. It seems the fall in the value of the pound compared with the dollar has made the UK an excellent place to buy classic cars – many of those sold by RM are going to buyers in the US. What is it they say about every cloud having a silver lining?