New car registrations up over 30 to the end of september
SALES figures released today by car history experts Motorcheck.ie show new car registrations are up over 30% year on year, with over 121,000 new cars registered to the end of September.
For the same period last year just 93,000 units were registered.
Sales for the month of September were apparently unaffected by the VW diesel emissions scandal, with sales up 23% on September 2014 and with diesels accounting for 72% of sales in the month. Year-to-date sales of diesel cars account for 71% of all transactions.
However, the managing director of Motorcheck.ie, Michael Rochford, said it's still too early to tell how sales of diesel cars might be affected by the recent emissions scandal, even though there hasn't been any evidence of an immediate slump in sales since the scandal broke on September 22.
He said: “Diesel sales still account for the vast majority of new car sales in Ireland. That said, petrol has been making a comeback and is actually growing much faster than diesel sales this year.”
The stats show that sales of new diesel cars have increased by 26% this year whereas sales of new petrol cars have actually increased by over 40%.
Sales in the business sector continue to boom too, with sales of both light commercial and heavy goods vehicles up 40% year on year. Light commercial vehicle sales are up over 48% alone.
The used market continues to struggle, though, with a lack of good quality stock available to meet demand. Imports from the UK, which can normally be relied upon to plug this gap, are actually down 13% for the year due to the unfavourable exchange rate conditions, which means there are 5,500 fewer cars coming into the state from the UK this year so far.
The top five manufacturers, in order, with the most new car registrations are: Volkswagen, Toyota, Ford, Hyundai and Nissan. The top five models are: Volkswagen Golf, Ford Focus, Nissan Qashqai, Skoda Octavia and Volkswagen Passat. Finally, the top five selling commercial vehicles are: Ford Transit, VW Caddy, Ford Transit Connect, Citroen Berlingo and Toyota Landcruiser.