Our search data, combined with your responses to the survey, clearly shows a desire amongst car buyers to drive down their fuel bills.
The top two financial concerns with regards to running a car are the price of fuel and road tax.
Unsurprisingly that means more people are considering switching to a diesel car - 61.23% of our respondents feel that way.
While searches on Carzone.ie confirm this desire, with 79.8% being for diesel cars, only 51.2% of the stock is diesel.
The apparent imbalance has a lot to do with the change to CO2 emissions-based motor taxation in 2008. This favours efficient models, and diesel engines in particular, so new car sales since then have been predominantly diesel.
A telling 67% of new cars sold between the start of 2009 and the end of 2012 were diesel and the trend increased year-on-year to 74% for 2012 alone.
Before 2008, VRT and annual road tax were calculated according to engine size which encouraged buyers to opt for small capacity petrol cars.
Petrol cars therefore make up the majority of the fleet. This is backed up by Cartell.ie’s data, revealing that only 33% of all cars on the road in Ireland are fuelled by diesel.
Top Tip:While diesel cars are more fuel efficient, most drivers that travel less than 20,000 kilometres per year are better off considering a (cheaper to buy) petrol model. That’s especially the case when it comes to really small cars, as they’re efficient anyway.