Looking at the overall Irish motoring market, the latest edition of the Carzone.ie Motoring Report shows there was a staggering 1,125,794 used car transactions in 2015.
The report also analyses trends associated with buying and selling cars and showed 15% of Irish motorists claimed they bought a car to save on car running costs, while a further 13% simply wanted a more reliable car. Interestingly but perhaps not surprisingly, 30% of married people declared they wanted a larger car to accommodate a growing family.
The report highlights how Irish motorists demonstrated prudence when buying a car by researching their purchase thoroughly. In total, 45% of motorists researched up to three models before deciding to buy while 24% researched more than five models.
In terms of what motorists were searching for specifically, German car marques remain extremely popular amongst Irish motorists with Volkswagen topping the polls for most popular car marque. Volkswagen was closely followed by BMW in second, Audi in third followed by Toyota and Ford in fourth and fifth places respectively.
When it comes to the most popular model of car, the Volkswagen Golf tops the poll for the second successive year followed by the Ford Focus and Volkswagen Passat.
The colour black remains extremely popular amongst Irish motorists accounting for some 23% of colour searches. White is next in line on 16% followed by blue (6%) silver (5%) and red (5%).
Fuel type is still a critical part of the buying process for Irish motorists. The Carzone.ie Motoring Report shows that 78% of searches in 2015 were for diesel models with 17% of searches for petrol.
In fact, the report goes as far as to identify the most searched for car in Ireland in the past 12 months with a black 2012 Volkswagen Golf Diesel the single most searched car.
What is also unveiled is where motorists are buying their cars from with a large portion of Irish motorists (41%) purchasing from franchise dealers with a further 34% buying from independent dealers and 15% buying their car online.