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Ford says that it was the best-selling marque in Ireland in July, if combined passenger car and commercial vehicle sales are taken into account.
Those combined figures show that Ford sold or registered 3,399 cars and 1,178 vans in July, giving it a total of 4,577 sales. That compares to Hyundai in second place with 4,012 cars and 25 vans and Toyota in third with 3,144 cars and 283 vans.
"We are delighted that Ford is top of the pile for the important 162 registration July sales period," said Ciarán McMahon, Chairman and Managing Director of Ford Ireland. "In spite of the small increase in the overall market, the year-to-date totals for both cars and vans are running at a very healthy surplus (19.4 and 24.8 per cent respectively) and we would expect overall sales for the year to finish up with that order of increase on the 2015 full year figures".
However, take away the vans figures and Ford has been soundly beaten by Hyundai and in fact slips to fourth place in the overall rankings for the year to date, behind both Toyota and Volkswagen as well. Nissan is in fifth place, Skoda in sixth, Renault in seventh, Opel in eighth, Kia in ninth and Audi in tenth as of the 31st of July.
The best-selling model, as it has been all this year, is the Hyundai Tuscon, which has sold 6,918 units so far this year. That puts it significantly ahead of the Volkswagen Golf in second place (4,783 sales) and the Ford Focus in third (4,483). The rest of the top ten selling models consisted of the Nissan Qashqai, Skoda Octavia, Ford Fiesta, Toyota Corolla, Toyota Yaris, Volkswagen Passat and Toyota Auris.
So far in 2016, 131,032 new cars have been registered, making it something of a bumper year and the final figure, by the end of December, is expected to nudge close to 150,000 units. That's just within the range that the Society of the Irish Motor Industry reckons is the viable level for the car market in Ireland (they say between 150,000 and 170,000 units, other economic experts say we should be investing for more like 130,000 a year) but the sales growth is slowing down.
Although July sales got off to a storming start in the first week, they tapered off rapidly, ending the month with just an eight per cent increase over the same period in 2015, as compared to a 19 per cent year-on-year rise in sales. That slowdown is being blamed on a number of factors, from Brexit worries to falling consumer confidence (which are presumably linked) to a natural ending of the recent rapid rise in car sales, but either way it has the industry worried about a potentially flat, possibly even falling car market for the rest of the year and into 2017.
Commenting on the figures SIMI Director General Alan Nolan said: "The motor industry performed strongly in the first half of 2016, with increased activity in both car and commercial vehicle sales. This growth has continued into July, although at a noticeably slower rate than the first two quarters, perhaps due to a combination of external factors such as Brexit and the fact that the extremely high growth rates of recent years must naturally slow as we get closer to a more normal market following a period of catch up.
"It is important however for both the Industry and the Economy that, new vehicle sales continue to be at sustainable levels, which for new cars is in the region of 150,000 to 160,000, based on the current population and the age of the national car fleet. A new car market in the region of 150,000 delivers over €1Billion in tax revenues, supports the employment of more than 40,000 in the Motor Industry, and assists in reducing our CO2 emissions from transport by tens of thousands of tonnes.
"In this context, we would encourage a Budget strategy focused on building consumer confidence and improving the business environment, particularly with all recent economic forecasts for Ireland anticipating lower growth rates than had been previously expected for the remainder of this year and for 2017."
Ford's McMahon is sanguine though. "Whatever about the overall market, so far 2016 has been very successful for Ford. We have grown our market share by 1.8 percentage points (growing from 12.0 to 13.2 per cent) with total sales at over 19,000 units and 4,000 above last year. This has been achieved by increased sales of our 'old reliables': Fiesta and Focus, but also by a very healthy increase in models like Kuga which has sold over 2,000 units year to date and our new S-MAX and Galaxy models are also performing very strongly. All in all, we are very much on track to achieve the top spot in Ireland's combined car and van market for 2016 and that will be a great achievement," he said.