Cartell.ie did some interesting number crunching on used car market transactions for the first four months of this year. Not only did it reveal a considerable jump in used car transactions across the country, it also showed an increase in demand for luxury brands, plus, perhaps most importantly, there are signs of ‘normalisation’ in the market.
John Byrne of Cartell.ie explains: “In a normalised market we would expect to see an even spread of transactions across most of the registration years as motorists return to normal three- or four-year sales cycles. This was more in evidence in the first four months of 2014 than the same period in 2013. Combined with the significant increase in used vehicle transactions in the market year over-year we are clearly seeing signs of a return to what we would consider a normalised used market.”
In that same period, an average jump of 20% in the number of used car transactions was recorded, up from 454,836 in the same period of 2013 to a huge 541,237 for the first half of this year. While a transaction is defined as a vehicle sale, be it dealer-to-dealer, dealer to private or private to private (and includes all vehicle types and tax classes) the percentage gain is highly significant. Counties showing the largest percentage increase in transactions were Cavan (28.18%), Offaly (24.95%), Monaghan (24.54%) and Clare (24%).
Sales of all car brands around Ireland increased accordingly, but the largest percentage gains were by Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz - in that order at 27.3-, 25.7- and 23.6% more transactions than in the same period in 2013. In terms of overall transactions, Ford is top, ahead of Volkswagen and Toyota.
