Irish Car Market shows signs of recovery in 2024. Sales in October reached 2,363 units with a 9.8% gain on the prior year. YTD figures stood at 120,841, posting little to no movement (+0.2%).
Market Trend and Outlook
The Irish economy is projected to grow by 1.2% in 2024 and 3.6% in 2025, following a slowdown in 2023 driven by weak performance in multinational-dominated sectors, elevated inflation, and tight financial conditions. Recently, inflation has eased, and a stable, tight labor market is expected to boost consumer demand and investment in the future.
In October, the Irish car market recovered from a 7-months negative streak, reaching 2,363 registrations (+9.8%). YTD figures remained relatively unchanged in terms of year-on-year volume, growing 0.2% and totaling 120,841 units.
Looking at cumulative data up to October 2024 brand-wise, the leader remained Toyota with 17,190 sales (+4.9%), followed by Volksvagen at 13,543 (+0.8%) and Skoda -up 1 spot- with 12,033 units sold (+19.2%).
Hyundai -down 1 spot- with 11,200 sales (-5.5%) ranked in 4th, followed by Kia with 9,502 sales (+4.3%), Audi -up 1 spot- with 5,380 (+2.6%) and Nissan -up 3 spots- with 4,967 registrations (+9.7%).
BMW ranked 8th with 4,757 sales (+0%), in front of Ford -down 3 spots- at 4,381 (-25%), and Peugeot -up 1 spot- closing the top 10 with 4,274 sales (-2.9%).
Looking at specific models the Hyundai Tucson was still the best seller despite decreasing 0.9% in year-on-year volume, followed by the Toyota Corolla up 7.8%.
Medium-Term Market Trend
The Irish car Market in 2011 started at 91,835 sales and fell for the following 2 years to 71,307 in 2013. The number of new registrations grew in 2014 to 97,289 and in the years after, reaching 147,612 in 2016. From 2017 to 2019 the market dropped to 117,146 by the end of 2019.
In 2020 ,magnified by the pandemic, the downtrend continued with new car registrations falling 24.4% to 88,606.
Post-covid in 2021 the Irish car market boomed 18.6% rising back above the 100k mark to 105,127 sales. Although the uptrend continued for the second year in a row the growth was a lot less pronounced, with 2022 reaching 105,483 sales (+0.3%). A combination of factors are behind the current industry struggle: the disruption in the global supply chain caused by a lack of raw materials, in particular for the production of microchips and the Governments push towards Evs.
The Irish Car Market reported a total of 121,993 new sales and with a 15.3% increase compared to the previous year.
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales for all Brands, top 10 Manufacturers Group and top 10 Models
