Motors News

New car sales in Ireland increased by almost a third at the start of this year but figures are still nowhere near the good times.

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) revealed 13,624 new private cars were licensed last month, up 30pc from 10,469 during January 2010.

CEO of Motorcheck.ie, Shane Teskey, believes the new figures should are something to be cautiously optimistic about and says that it’s easy to see a large percentile increase given that sales have been low since 2008.

“It’s relatively good news but it still doesn’t bring us anywhere near where we were in 2008,” Mr Teskey said.

An interesting statistic from the report is that in every 10 new cars sold during January were diesel.

“There’s been a reversal from petrol to diesel in recent years but I think the launch of electric cars this year will be important for the industry,” Mr Teskey said.

“The new Nissan Leaf and the Renault Fluence ZE (pictured above) will sell well and support from the government in terms of free parking, for example, would be a major help for sales.”

Meanwhile, there was a slight drop in the registration of new goods vehicles to 969 last month from 1,016 in the same period last year.

Toyota was the most popular make of car sold, followed by Ford, Volkswagen and Renault.