Our car plate system makes January the busiest time on forecourts. Is there another way, asks Catherine Cronin
Will Santa deliver his usual stocking-full of goodies to car dealerships this Christmas? If history is any guide, their New Year's rave should last well into March.
Early in the new year, the flurry of customers hanging around forecourts waiting for test-drives can sometimes make car-buying look like an omnibus edition of "You're a Star".
Every year, new car sales peak in the first quarter when dealerships get up to 50 per cent of their business. Summer is much slower and from September, buyers hold off for the new plate in January.
BMW Ireland's managing director Conrad Schmidt says that, while dealers are delighted with the business and very accustomed to the new-year rush, he has never seen a market with such a pronounced buying pattern. "The seasonality is more marked here than in any other country in Europe," he says.
This stretches salesmen, distributors and the registration authorities in the first quarter of the year, while they remain underutilised later on when they can actually give customers much more time and attention.
It's all tied in with the plate. Since 1986 when our current system (86 G 123 etc) was introduced, the first quarter buying peak has become much more pronounced, says Cyril McHugh of the Society of Irish Motor Industry (SIMI).
"There's always huge excitement in the new plate. In itself it creates an incentive to change a car," he says. The lure of the millennium plate was proof of that. It was the greatest car-buying spree of all time, though those of us who didn't indulge then are still happy to be driving a "car from the last century".
Hard financial reasons also influences the first-quarter peak. On re-sale, a car's value is determined by when it first goes on the road. Most, if not all cars sold next month will have been manufactured in 2004 but the December 2004 buyer will be deemed to have a much older car before January is out. So most prefer spread the depreciation over 12 months rather than one or two.
Because of this, Schmidt says that few car registration systems so blatantly age and date a car as ours. He believes it should be reviewed to see if there's a system which could help level out the peak, better facilitate customer service and allow people make more rational decisions about the value of trade-ins.
For many of these reasons a new registration system was introduced in Britain in 2001. Though plates still have a date indicator, two are issued there annually instead of one.
"It's much better for dealers," says David Browne, head of the automotive design school at Coventry University. "Instead of one large rush, they now have two milder rushes, based around September and March. There are still peaks and troughs, but not quite as pressurised."
But not all in the industry believe it would work here. As the market is much smaller, there is not as pressing a need to change, according to Fiat Ireland's Joe Gantly. The mindset is to trade-up every three years because of expiring finance or car warranty, but Fiat offers a four-year manufacturer's warranty with new models to give customers more choice with this.
Though he's now rushing to get newly-launched Seat Toledos onto the forecourts for January, Tony Neville of OHM distributors, says that, whatever about the sales peak, our current plate system is unlikely to change. It's simple, logical, easy to remember and loved by the gardaí.
The year and county are obvious and, if only a few digits are recalled after that, cars can be very easily traced.
For those for whom the forecourt is a challenge, Autofinder.ie says its partner website is the perfect solution. Next year, it hopes to sell some 250 cars online.
Ford Ireland managing director Eddie Murphy believes many would be loathe to lose the current system which is the most tangible visible manifestation of a new car.
Whatever about the popularity of the new plate, a small but growing number here try to personalise their plates though options are limited in Ireland. Maybe this is not a bad thing. It is a far bigger fad in Britain where many people seem happy to pay insane prices to confuse neighbours or personalise their cars.
Britain's vehicle licensing authorities earn some £75 (about €108) million a year from auctioning old plates. The fewer the letters and the lower the number, the higher the price, according to Browne. Decades' old Northern Ireland registration numbers are very popular. They are being marketed as "ideal to hide the age of your car inexpensively as they don't contain a year letter".
Some of its old KIW 1234 range have been reincarnated as KIW1 . . .
From the US there are some unforgettable gems such as WAS HIS, as seen on a Porsche, or TKIT OFF, on a woman's Mazda sports car.