Motorcheck, the car history checking service, has crunched the numbers on Irish new car sales in the ten years from 2013 to the end of 2023. The figures show that the same Volkswagen Golf was actually the best-selling car of that decade, with 37,164 sales over the period. VW was also the big overall winner, taking the top spot with 128,635 sales in total.
Not only did the Tucson almost overtake the Golf in spite of the German hatchback’s three-year head start, it’s also the poster-boy for a sea-change in Irish buying habits. We’ve moved from a market dominated by small and medium hatchbacks to one that’s so SUV-heavy that we really are living up to our ‘51st State’, ‘Boston-is-the-next-parish-over’ Irish-American cliche.
So it’s important to dig into the figures, as Rochford emphasises: “Perhaps it is more telling that in 2022 the only three body types worth taking about are the SUV, Hatch and MPV and all three are almost on an equal footing, whereas the saloon has fallen away completely.
Has that come to a crashing halt, given the recent squeeze of the cost of living and climbing interest rates? “It is too difficult to predict” says Brian McNulty, the commercial director of Mobilize Financial Services Ireland, which used to be called Renault Bank until a recent rebrand.. “The war in Ukraine created a lot of uncertainty in the finance markets and interest rates have been impacted.
This is quality journalism.. like.. unreal stuff.. nail biting..
Car’s? Who wrote this article?