Welcome to the first ever Carzone Motoring Report, a bi-annual digital publication focusing on the state of the Irish car market and the opinions of thousands of motorists.
Carzone.ie is not only Ireland’s Ultimate Motoring Marketplace with over 20 million visits generating over 900 million page impressions last year, it’s also an authority on the used car market. Over 200 million searches for used cars were carried out on Carzone during 2012, which hints somewhat at the buoyancy of the used car market. Our analysts have crunched the vast data into digestible bite-sized chunks for this report.
Some of the analysis in this document was made possible by accessing Cartell.ie’s database of vehicle transactions. Cartell.ie was the first company to offer car history checks in Ireland and continues to lead the industry. Its analysts enabled a detailed look at when buyers are most likely to buy (the first Tuesday of every February apparently!) and also at the increasing average age of cars in Ireland.
The final piece of the jigsaw, complementing the cold hard facts, is a motorist survey. We asked 1,308 car buyers a series of questions in a bid to understand how the economy is influencing buying and selling trends. The results make for interesting reading and they combine with the search data and that from Cartell.ie to paint a clearer picture of what’s going on in the Irish car market.
As this is the first of such reports you can treat this document as a stake in the ground. To accurately track changes we will be publishing follow-on reports every six months, which will not only allow us to illustrate the progression of the motoring industry, but also perhaps help us predict the future.
Key Findings
For the past three years, the busiest day for searches on Carzone.ie has been the fourth Monday in January
While new car sales for 2012 were relatively low at 79,498 units, 889,441 used cars changed hands
The BMW 3 Series is the most searched for car on Carzone.ie, followed by the Volkswagen Golf
Irish motorists like to dream! There are a disproportionate number of searches for exotic sports car brands such as Lamborghini, Ferrari, Aston Martin and Maserati
2008 was the most searched for year in 2012 and remains the most searched for year in 2013
There is some optimism. On average, used car buyers spent €5,000 to €10,000 on their current car, but believe they’ll spend more on its replacement
Warren Cray
General Manager