Celebrating its 40th birthday in 2014, the Volkswagen Golf remains the nation’s favourite used car if searches on Carzone.ie are anything to go by. It was the most searched model of all for the first months of this year, continuing a trend set in the latter half of 2014. Somewhat surprisingly, the BMW 3 Series is pushed down into third spot by its big brother, the 5 Series. Could this be a sign of improved consumer confidence?
The trend continues elsewhere, as other large executive German saloons gain popularity on the second hand market: the Mercedes-Benz E-Class is up one place to seventh overall, while the Audi A6 jumps two places to eighth. Further down the ranking, but perhaps just as significant, the sporty looking Audi A5 Sportback leaps from 24th place to 19th. Interestingly, the only SUV in the top 20 is the Hyundai Santa Fe (the Nissan Qashqai is in 10th spot, but it’s classed as a ‘crossover’).
Despite all the shifting about, the most searched for car brands are mostly unchanged, certainly in the top six places. BMW takes it from Volkswagen, Audi, Ford, Toyota and Mercedes-Benz. Reflecting the success of Czech brand Skoda, it moves up two places from 12th to 10th, while MINI jumps from 22nd at the end of 2013 to 19th overall this year, perhaps spurred by the arrival of an all-new version.
When the first of these Carzone.ie Motoring Reports were compiled - looking at 2012’s data - the most searched for year was 2008, which was no surprise given the changeover that year to emissions-based taxation. It was assumed that buyers would continue to search for cars that are no more than four years old, but in fact, that changeover year is still the most popular, accounting for 8.19% of all searches in the first six months of this year. It’s followed by 2010, 2011 and 2012, while 2009 is inexplicably demoted to sixth place - in line with a dismally low number of cars registered in Ireland that year.
Encouragingly, in terms of the Irish economy, ‘141’-registered cars were searched for by enough users of Carzone.ie to put it in eighth place. And triskaidekaphobia (the fear of the number 13) appears not to be as big an issue as many thought last year, as ‘131’ and ‘132’ plates were in 10th and 13th spots respectively.
Despite the apparent optimism amongst car buyers, we’re still a conservative lot when it comes to colour preference. Black remains, overwhelmingly, the most searched for colour, ahead of white, red, silver, blue and grey. Saying that, a somewhat amusing 310 people searched for pink cars, so we’re not all shrinking violets.