New car sales for the month of January have bust through the 20,000 mark for the first time in six long years, leading to renewed hopes that 2014 could yet be a bumper year for the motor trade in Ireland. New registrations finished up with a figure of 22,195 cars, which marks an increase of 32.6 per cent compared to the 17,280 sold in January last year. It's the highest first month registration figures since January of 2008.
Toyota finished top of the sales charts, with Volkswagen in second place followed by Hyundai and Ford. The top three selling individual models were the Volkswagen Golf, then the Toyota Corolla and then the Hyundai ix35.
Skoda completed the top five marques in the sales charts, while Opel will be cheered by a performance that saw it nab sixth overall, ahead of Nissan, Renault, Kia and Audi.
More good news comes in the shape of the increase in demand for commercial vehicles. Earlier this month, Volkswagen Group Ireland boss Simon Elliot told us how pleased he was to see a growing demand for vans and that it was not "down to big fleet deals; these are small to medium businesses buying new vans - the butcher, the baker, the candle-stick maker if you like." That sentiment seems to be echoed by the fact that the commercial vehicle market is up by 43.7 per cent compared to last January, with the Ford Transit, Volkswagen Caddy and Citroen Berlingo as the top-selling models.
Anything else?
Well, there is still the spectre of pre-registering to deal with. If the market is really as buoyant as everyone is claiming, then there will be little to no need for car makers and dealers to pre-register cars on the last day of the month to increase their market share and meet bonus targets. Last Friday was of course the last day, and analysis of the figures is not yet in, but if there was a significant amount of pre-registering going on, then these impressive sales figures could yet turn out to be built upon foundations of shifting sands.