Ryland Group motored ahead yesterday after the car dealership group said it expects its full year profits to exceed analysts' expectations of about £4.5m.

Old Mutual Securities said the company is obviously outperforming the UK market as a whole, which is in turn doing better than the market on the continent.

Recent European new passenger car registration statistics showed UK growth of 8.2% for the first five months of 2002. Ryland is outpacing that growth owing to its decision to exit the low-margin volume car distribution market and to concentrate on specialist and luxury models, according to Old Mutual's Richard Andrews.

The broker estimates that the company will make profits of £5.7m for the year to end June 2002.

The question now is whether the company is a tasty enough morsel to become part of the sector consolidation, much of which has been engineered by Guinness Peat, which also has a stake in Ryland. The shares closed up 4.5p at 107.5p.