It was a good year overall for the Irish motor industry in 2004 with new car sales of 154,141 compared with 145,223 in 2003, a 6 per cent increase.
Not all marques, however, enjoyed growth, with Fiat down 30 per cent, Citroën 15 per cent and Nissan 8 per cent.
The 2004 market was dominated by Toyota, which added an additional 3,000 cars to its 2003 tally and boosted its market share to over 13 per cent from 11.8. Toyota and Ford have traditionally vied for the top slot, but last year Ford sales fell back 4 per cent to just under 17,000, widening the gap with Toyota's total of 20,150.
Dave Shannon, Toyota Ireland's managing director, doesn't believe that his company's dominant position can be taken for granted this year.
"Every year is a new year. It could be this year that there might not be a hub cab between us and Ford. It's a bit like the Premiership in English soccer, very competitive. We are expecting stiff competition from the new Ford Focus which will be impacting this year."
Toyota's best players included the Corolla which led the C segment, where competitors include the Focus and Opel Astra, while the Avensis was once again the best-selling car in the family-and-fleet D segment.
For Eddie Murphy, the chairman and managing director of Ford, 2004 was challenging.
"The small car sector dropped alarmingly in the first few months of the year and that cost us registrations.
"By the same token, the Focus arrived too late in the year to make any impact. The Toyota sales performance is laudable but I have no doubt it will be tit for tat between both brands next year."
At the prestige end of the market, the growth far exceeded the overall 6 per cent. BMW, for instance, was up 31 per cent and it is now outpacing its other German rival, Mercedes-Benz, by around 100 cars a year.
Even more spectacular was the success of BMW's Mini division, up 95 per cent on 2003. Conrad Schmidt, BMW's Irish boss, says he believes there will be further growth for the marque this year.
"The 1-series will be really coming into its own and we will have the new 3-series. We have new dealerships coming on stream, like Cork city, and they will be tapping on the potential that's out there for quality cars."
Mercedes-Benz sales were down 4 per cent, but Audi, the upmarket division of Volkswagen, registered a 17 per cent jump. Jaguar, with a much smaller unit base, was up 32 per cent while the two Swedish marques, Volvo and Saab, sold 8 and 16 per cent more respectively. One prestige loser was Alfa Romeo: its sales fell by 19 per cent to just over 630 units.
Land Rover was up 13 per cent and managing director David Harpur says it happened in spite of a slowing up in the appeal of SUVs. He, too, is expecting this year to bring growth. "The new Discovery 3 came too late to make a real contribution in 2004: this will be its real impact year."
Among the other volume marques, Opel appeared to have stopped the slide in its registrations, recording a 1 per cent increase to almost 10,800.
Renault was an impressive performer, increasing its sales over 2003 by 17 per cent to almost 11,500. Even better was Mazda, up 27 per cent and reflecting a success that it is experiencing all over Europe.
Kia from Korea, which promotes value-for-money cars with a high specification, had the second highest percentage growth, after Mini. Kia sales were up 83 per cent, from 1,000 to over 1,800. The other bigger volume Korean marque, Hyundai was up 11 per cent, registering 5,860 cars.
Cyril McHugh, chief executive of the Society of the Irish Motor Industry, says the overall 6 per cent increase was well established early on in the year.
He counters the argument that too many new cars are clogging up our inadequate road system by pointing out that Irish car ownership is still low compared with most other developed European countries. "We are 37 per 100, it's 45 in Scotland, 48 in the UK as a whole, and over 50 in France and Germany."
What then of 2005? Cyril McHugh predicts a market of between 162,000 and 165,000, more or less in line with the predicted 5 per cent growth in the economy. That's still a long way from the record 230,000 figure that was recorded in 2000. But he thinks that sort of figure could come sooner rather than later.
"The SSIAs are going to be a factor within the next couple of years. Most of all, though, the economy is doing well and that feel-good factor makes people buy cars.," he said.