What's the news?
Registrations of new cars in Ireland slumped by 10.4 per cent in 2017, falling to a final total of 131,356 registrations by the end of December. That's not as disastrous a year as it could have been - some doom-sayers were predicting a 15 or 20 per cent drop this time last year, but concerning at a time when the rest of the Irish economy is generally on the up.
Commercial vehicle registrations actually climbed a bit, in percentage terms, in December but the overall numbers were so small as to not make a major impact on the final full year figures, which fell by 14.2 per cent in total in 2017.
Why the slump? Simple - the value of Sterling, which has driven a vast increase in the number of used imports from the UK. In fact, car imports surged by almost 30 per cent in 2017, to 93,454 and more than one motor industry expert has predicted that if Sterling continues to fall (which seems likely given the Brexit debacle) then used imports could very soon outnumber new car sales. Imports of used commercial vehicles, incidentally, grew by 21 per cent in 2017.
Is there a silver lining in any of this for the Irish car trade heading into 2018? Well, yes, a little. New car imports have fallen to a very low level - just 79 in the whole year - which would indicate that Irish dealers are offering good value on new cars. With many dealers having swallowed the painful pill of slashing their used prices during the year, there may be some hope that the imports market may at least stabilise.
Commenting on the figures SIMI Director General, Alan Nolan stated: "2017 was a very challenging year for the Motor Industry, mainly due to the impact of Brexit on Euro/Sterling exchange rates. Without Brexit we would have anticipated a reasonable level of growth in the market but in the aftermath of the UK Brexit vote we had modified our projection to 132,000 and that prediction turned out to be very accurate with the car market finishing at 131,356. This number is still better than most recent years and produced reasonable volumes across all vehicle sales sectors.
"We are, of course, now at the commencement of the new 181 sales period which is hugely important for our members who remain optimistic for the coming year. For new car buyers competition in the choice of models, the various incentives and special offers as well as the range of finance options mean that competition is driving value for consumers. The obvious value available in the Irish new car market has been apparent over the past 12 months with only 79 new cars imported in 2017, despite the low value of sterling. While used imports have been increasing strongly new car imports have fallen by 25 per cent in the last year and by almost 60% over the last three years. With such a range of models, offers and finance options available to consumers to choose from, the best advice, as always, is to research in advance to shop around and, if you can, shop local and support businesses in your home place."