OFFICIAL STATISTICS RELEASED by the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI) show that new car registrations for the year 2016 finished a substantial 17.5% ahead of 2015, with 146,672 sold.
New car registrations for the month of December were up 45% (499) compared with December 2015 (344).
Toyota is now the country’s bestselling car brand, with 18.5% year-on-year growth and sales of 15,530 passenger vehicles lending the automaker an overall market share of more than 10 per cent.
Hyundai was expected to top the chart due to high sales of its Tucson SUV, but a last-minute surge in registrations for the new C-HR pushed Toyota into the lead by just 88 units.
In December alone there were 258 Toyotas registered, far more than any other brand (Peugeot was next with 59 cars registered in December). Of those, 157 were of the new C-HR.
Toyota’s bestselling passenger vehicles were the Corolla with sales of 3,751, followed closely by the Yaris with 3,727, Auris with 2,854, RAV4 with 2,349 and the Avensis with 1,663.
The company’s hybrids were also popular with a total of 1,958 hybrids sold in 2016. This represents an overall year on year growth of 115% compared to 2015.
Meanwhile, Ford was the leading brand in the combined car and van market during 2016 with 22,175 registrations, ahead of Volkswagen (20,086) and Toyota (17,483).
The five top-selling makes for 2016:
1. Toyota with 15,530 units registered
2. Hyundai with 15,442 units registered
3. Volkswagen with 15,411 units registered
4. Ford with 14,603 units registered
5. Nissan with 11,885 units registered
The five top-selling models for 2016:
1. Hyundai Tucson with 7,425 registrations
2. Volkswagen Golf with 5,011 registrations
3. Ford Focus with 4,835 registrations
4. Skoda Octavia with 4,660 registrations
5. Nissan Qashqai with 4,591 registrations
Figures show that the most popular car segment was SUVs with 38,764 of them registered. The next most popular was the small C-segment cars like the Opel Astra, Toyota Corolla and Volkswagen Golf with 38,629 registered. The most popular body style was hatchback with 46,673 (31.84%) units registered followed by MPVs with 40,331 (27.51%) units registered.
In terms of fuel, 70.05% of all cars registered in 2016 were diesel powered and just 392 (0.27%) were electric.
Alan Nolan, Director General, SIMI commented:
New car registrations for 2016 finished at 146,600 for the full year, making it the highest year for new car registrations since 2008. Despite some slowing in the second half of the year, the numbers are in line with expectations at the start of 2016 and underline the continued growth and buoyancy in the economy.
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