With just over 73,000 new cars registered in Ireland in 2013 to date the market is said to be in the doldrums, but a healthy second-hand market, in which 454,8233 cars changed hands in the first six months alone, shows that Irish buyers are still changing cars. This is one of the findings of the bi-annual Carzone.ie Motoring Report, which has been compiled using the 100 million searches carried out on Carzone.ie during the first six months of the year, vehicle transactions carried out on Cartell.ie and an in-depth survey of over 2,356 car buyers.
While nearly half a million used cars changed hands between January and June Irish motorists are still holding onto the cars longer than before, leading to the average age of the Irish car park being just over eight years old. With these cars ineligible for cheaper, emissions based road tax it is perhaps no surprise that 84 per cent of all searches on Carzone.ie are for diesel models as buyers look to lower their running costs. The promise of electric or hybrid cars to drop running costs even lower has not rung true with used car buyers with searches for these vehicles accounting for just 2.2 per cent of all searches, perhaps owing to their unknown quantities as a used car buy.
In addition to being the best-selling car in Ireland at the moment the Volkswagen Golf is also the most searched for car with an average of 410,338 searches per month, followed by the BMW 3 Series, BMW 5 Series and Audi A4. The Golf did face some stiff competition from convertibles when the temperature spiked during our long summer though. The week of June 10 saw an 89 per cent increase in searches for drop top models compared to the preceding week as searchers began to dream of open air drives during the mini-heatwave. This was promptly followed by a 49 per cent decrease as rain returned, but is does show how much effect the weather can have on our searching habits.
Weather has little or no impact on the way we finance our cars however. With much of the 2,300 people surveyed being used car buyers it is perhaps not a surprise that few opted for a Personal Contract Plan (PCP) for their latest purchase, but what is perhaps most surprising is the fact that over 57 per cent of car buyers did not use any form of credit when buying their car, perhaps suggesting that Irish buyers are beginning to dip into their 'rainy day' funds. That said a significant 78 per cent of respondents said they would consider a form of car finance for their next purchase with 88.6 per cent saying they had never been refused a loan in the past.
Warren Cray, general manager of Carzone.ie commented: "We had an extremely busy first half of the year at Carzone.ie, with over 100 million used car searches on our site between January and July. With over 450,000 used vehicles having changed hands, it is great to see a continued buoyant used car market in Ireland and we are confident the year end results will be just as positive."
You can download the full document yourself from the Carzone.ie website.