My big week

John Phelan , car salesman and hybrid-car enthusiast

John Phelan, car salesman and hybrid-car enthusiast

John Phelan sums up January in the car-sales business by saying: It's a time when lunch is for wimps." Phelan is adamant that any excess pounds he gained at Christmas will be worked off by the long hours he will put in this month. "We sell 50 per cent of our cars for the entire year in January, February and March. I sold about 40 cars before Christmas, so a lot of my workload this week is delivering cars to people and going through the handover procedure."

Phelan works at Murphy & Gunn's Rathgar showroom, in Dublin 6, where he specialises in the Toyota range. In recent years environmental concerns have raised the profile of the Prius, its hybrid petrol-electric car - Toyota Ireland hopes to sell its 1,000th Prius by the middle of next month.

"There has been phenomenal interest in it. I think people were sceptical when it first came out, and wondered if it was a gimmick. I was sceptical myself, but I think when you drive it you understand what the whole thing is about. Initial buyers were quite specialised, engineers and so on, but I think the average motorist is interested in it now."

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What kind of questions will he have to deal with? "Typically the queries are about resale values and whether it has to be plugged in at night. I explain that the running costs are much lower, especially for city driving, as the battery kicks in."

Phelan took an unconventional route to the showroom. "I was a bar manager, and then I went to work
for Bill Cullen in Renault in 2000. He wanted people from outside the motor trade. I worked there for
about three years and then moved here."

Is he optimistic about sales prospects for this year? "I think 2007 will be a great year. We would expect to see a bump from the SSIAs. Because it's not enough money to invest in property, cars and holidays will be the two big things, which should be good for us." Michael Kelly