Official statistics released today by the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI ) show that new car registrations for the year 2015 (124,945 ) finished up 30 per cent ahead of 2014 (96,284 ). That was itself a 30 per cent increase on circa 74,000 units registered in 2013.
The top five selling makes were: Volkswagen, Toyota, Ford, Hyundai, and Nissan. The top five selling models were: Volkswagen Golf, Ford Focus, Nissan Qashqai, Skoda Octavia, and Ford Fiesta.
Some 95.5 per cent of new cars sold were in emissions categories A or B, and 71 per cent of new cars sold were diesel engined, whilst 27 per cent of new cars sold had petrol engines. However, petrol sales increased by 40 per cent whereas diesel sales only increased by 26 per cent.
The top five new car colours were: black (20 per cent ); silver (20 per cent ); grey (17 per cent ); white (13 per cent; and blue (11 per cent ).
The month of December registered a slight decrease of 1.44 per cent (342 ) compared with the same month in 2014 (347 ). However it should be noted that volumes for December are very small.
Light Commercial Vehicles (LCV ), for 2015 recorded a 42 per cent (23,722 ) increase on registrations last year (16,732 ). While the month of December saw registrations perform strongly with a 50 per cent increase (236 ) in comparison to December 2014 (157 ).
The top five selling LCV makes were: Ford, Volkswagen, Renault, Toyota, and Citroen. And the top five selling models were: Ford Transit, Ford Transit Connect, Volkswagen Caddy, Renault Trafic, and Citroen Berlingo.
HGV (Heavy Goods Vehicle ) registrations for 2015 (2,135 ) were up 9 per cent on 2014.
Commenting on the figures SIMI director general Alan Nolan said: “We are pleased that 2015 has turned out to be a good year of continued recovery for our industry, which is a very strong indicator of the health of the general economy. We now look forward to 2016 with greater optimism and a real potential to see registrations return to normal levels that we have not seen since before 2008. Sales within the different sectors have performed well in 2015 and we would expect to see this improvement continue in the new year.”
