One lucky Irish owner has taken delivery of a new €500,000 Mercedes SLR McLaren, the second one sold through the Irish Mercedes distributor, MDL, but the first to be registered in Ireland. The previous SLR sold here was no sooner in the State than it was transported to the British home of the owner and registered over there. This time we're likely to see an SLR on Irish roads.
As part of the purchase, buyers get the chance to tour the McLaren plant in Woking where the car is built, before doing a few laps of the nearby track, used by BBC's Top Gear in a test car.
Two more SLRs for Ireland are due before the end of the year, according to sales manager Ciaran Allen.
BMW group car sales rose 9.7 per cent in April to 111,285 units, the world's largest luxury carmaker said on Monday, beating its own preliminary forecast given last week.
Sales of its core BMW brand rose 9.1 per cent to 92,984 units last month, while Mini sales jumped an even higher 13.4 per cent to 18,245 cars. BMW also delivered 56 Rolls-Royce Phantoms in April, down 16.4 per cent from a year ago.
As Lexus expands its model range some dealers are demonstrating their confidence in its future growth prospects with multi-million euro investments in dealerships. The latest is Tom Hogan Motors in Co Galway, which opened new facilities last week at a cost of €3 million, with spending halved between its Toyota and Lexus brands.
According to Declan O'Halloran, group managing director, "We expect our Lexus sales to double over the next 12 months, partly due to the new facilities and partly because of new models like the GS300, RX400h, IS250, IS220 diesel, GS450h," says O'Halloran.
"Diesel will have an enormous impact on increasing Lexus sales with the engine range expansion allowing us to compete in more segments. Customer are waiting patiently for the arrival of the diesel and it will be accepted very well.
"Up until the arrival of the new range it wasn't really justifiable to invest in a stand-alone Lexus showroom but the new range makes it a necessity if we are going to maintain market leading levels of customer service as the volume increases substantially."
Correction: In last week's Motors we stated that the sales figures to the end of April revealed BMW had exceeded Mercedes in sales. In fact the figures we listed included MINI sales in the BMW total. MINI is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BMW.
The actual state of the market at the end of April was 3,151 sales for BMW with 2.99 per cent of the overall market, and 3,319 sales for Mercedes, with 3.15 per cent.