Car Sales Down 20.6% in February

New figures from the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI) show that car sales in February (17,128) were down 20.6% compared to the same month in 2016 (21,573), and cars for the year to date (56,110) are down 8.46% compared to the same period last year (61,295).

Light Commercial Vehicles (LCV) sales fell in February by 27.57% with 2,504 registrations compared to 3,457 in February last year. Sales for LCV’s were down 11.42% (8,869) compared to the same period in 2016 (10,012). The top five best selling LCV makes so far this year are: Ford (2,088), Volkswagen (1,733), Renault (1,033), Toyota (855) and Peugeot (630).

Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGC) sales were up 5.04% (271) in February compared to the same month last year (258). However, sales were down 2.42% (727) for the year so far compared to the same period last year (745). The top five selling makes of HGV so far this year are: Volvo (248), Scania (151), Mercedes-Benz (88), Daf (66) and Renault (65).

Nissan was the top selling make in February with 1,775 units, followed by Volkswagen (1,718), Toyota (1,682), Hyundai (1,444) and Skoda (1,363) completing the top five. However Toyota is the best selling brand for the year to date with 6,155 units. And for the first time in years, Mercedes-Benz is the best-selling premium car brand with an improvement of 79% compared to the same period last year.

The Hyundai Tucson is still the best selling model so far this year with 2,457 units sold. Nissan Qashqai (2,025), Ford Focus (1,844), Skoda Octavia (1,750) and Volkswagen Golf (1,736) completes the top five. The Renault Megane enters the top ten with 1,027 units compared to 94 in the same period last year.

SIMI Director General Alan Nolan said the industry had been “anticipating lower numbers in February compared to 2016, with Brexit continuing to impact on used vehicle imports, with fewer working days this year and with less hire-drive cars becasue of a later Easter but these numbers are somewhat poorer than we had hoped.”

SIMI predicts new car sales for the entire year to come close to 140,000, which would be 7,000 fewer than 2016.

For more information and statistics visit www.beepbeep.ie/stats.