New Car Sales

It’s two months since we last looked at the figures for new car sales released by the Society of the Irish Motor Industry.  The figures are here.  The relatively strong trend in new car sales has continued.  Of course, this is relative to the 2009 lows.  Figures are still substantially below those seen in 2007 and 2008.

The running total to the end of July for 2010 of 74,111 is nearly 16,500 ahead of the total new car sales for the whole of 2009 (57,635).  Retail sales in general may be going into reverse but in the motor industry they continue to improve.
The last five months of the year are generally very poor for new car sales.  In 2009 just over 7,000 cars were sold in the period from August to December.   Even for the “boom” years this is a very quiet time in the car showrooms.  This five month period had 20,500 sales in 2007 and 11,200 in 2008.  These correspond to 10.9% and 7.3% of the total sales for the year.  It will be interesting to see if the pick up in new car sales seen so far in 2010 will continue into this traditionally quiet period.