Total new car registrations for 2020 finished at 88,324, a 25 percent decrease on 2019 (117,109 ).
According to figures from the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI ), 79,969 imported used cars were registered last year, which is a decrease of 29.8 percent on 2019 (113,926 ).
Toyota’s Corolla was Ireland’s top selling car of 2020, while Volkswagen was the best-selling car brand. The country’s best selling car body type last year was the hatchback.
A total of 4,013 new electric cars were registered in 2020 in comparison to 3,444 in 2019. And grey is also the top selling colour and has continued to keep that title for the past five years.
Diesel still leads with 43.29 percent of new car sales.
Other stats of note show a changing market place in 2020. Diesel accounted for 43.29 percent, petrol 36.91 per cent, hybrid 11.86 per cent, electric 4.54 per cent, and plug-in hybrid 2.78 percent. Diesel remains the most popular engine type, while hybrid, electric and plug-in hybrid gained market share in 2020.
Meanwhile, manual transmissions (59.8 percent ) continue to be more popular despite a decline in market share with automatic transmissions (40.09 percent ) continuing to gain in popularity.
Finally, if pub quizzes ever return, here’s one - which county was the only one to record an increase in car sales in 2020 over the previous year?
The answer with 397 sales compared to the year previously (393 ) is County Leitrim, recording a 1.02 percent increase. Roscommon saw the next least percentage drop (-9.69 percent ), followed closely behind by Donegal (-9.87 percent ).
Light Commercials
New light commercial vehicle (LCV )/ van registrations in 2020 saw a smaller decrease of 14.2 per cent (21,732 ) compared to 2019 (25,336 ). Ford was the top selling brand with 20.97 percent (down from 23.45 percent in 2019 ), and the top selling model was the Peugeot Partner van.
Heavy Commercials
Meanwhile new heavy commercial vehicle (HGV )/truck registrations decreased by 22.3 percent (2,066 ) in comparison to 2019 (2,659 ).
