It's the busiest month of the year for car sales and initial reports suggest that, despite the general doom and gloom, car sales are remaining steady and on a par with last year. Michael McAleer reports.
Initial estimates, based on the first two days, show that car sales were up 6.6 per cent on the same period last year, with 4,822 cars sold compared to 4,500 for the first two days of last year.
While it is largely anecdotal at present, dealers are reporting steady sales with no significant downturn.
However, a large percentage of recorded car sales at this time of year are in fact pre-booked or pre-arranged sales, with up to 45 per cent of some marque's January sales pre-booked .
As for last year, the title of best selling marque went to Toyota in a very close run race.
Overall new car sales for 2002 dropped 5 per cent to 156,115. Commenting on the figures Cyril McHugh of the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI) said: "although car sales were down on 2001, it was nonetheless a very satisfactory trading year. Most analysts had predicted a fall well in excess of the 5 per cent but 2002 has proved to be the fourth highest level of car sales ever."
In the battle for the top marque title, Toyota won out for 2002. But it was an extremely close run race between it and the blue-oval of Ford. Toyota won the title with 11.4 per cent of car sales against 11.3 per cent for Ford, a difference of just 40 cars.
Toyota won the crown with a last minute rally in the dying weeks of the year, taking an amazing 39.6 per cent of the December sales. According to the sales figures, while Ford sold 183 cars, and Volkswagen sold 75, Toyota managed to clear a staggering 647 cars in December, securing first place for the year overall.
Toyota attribute the late surge to attempts at avoiding the Vehicle Registration Tax increase on cars over 1,901cc which came into effect on January 1st.