Ireland auto market in 2020 falls by 24.6% as the pandemic and lockdowns affect sales, in fact, Full-Year sales have been 88.324. The Toyota Corolla remains the most sold car in the country again.
Market Trend
The Irish car market was hit extremely harshly in 2020 as the global pandemic has impacted sales tremendously. In fact, the fall was so harsh that we recorded the lowest annual volume for the country since 1975.
Irish Automotive industry scored a strong recovery since 2014, both in the car and light commercial segments, reaching in 2016 a peak of 146.602 registrations, which has become the highest level of the entire decade. Indeed, in the following years, the market embarked on a negative pathway, losing 10.4% in 2017 with 131.336 cars sold and moderately declining (-4.2%) in 2018.
The reason for this negative trend can be found looking at the UK environment, where a drop in demand in an uncertain Brexit context has made Ireland full of zero-km sales while blocking the local new car market. The market was even worse in 2019, signing the third consecutive year of decline, ending with 117.100 units (-6.7%).
After starting the year with a slight negative trend (-3.5%), the market quickly collapsed in March as the virus struck. The sharpest drop in sales this year was in April when sales declined by 96.1% since all non-essential businesses had closed on March 13th. Nevertheless, the market recovered and even displayed an impressive 65.8% growth in September due to accumulated demand over the lockdown. In Q4 sales remained positive.
Indeed, Full-Year sales for 2020 have been 88.324, reporting a decline of 24.6% compared to 2019.
Brand-wise, this year the leader Volkswagen (-20.9%) gained 0.6% market share, followed by Toyota (-17.3%), which gained an impressive 0.9% share. Hyundai on the other hand lost 0.1% share, falling 26%. Skoda jumped 1 spot (-20.2%), followed by Ford which lost 29.4%.
Kia jumped 2 spots and lost 18.3%, overtaking Nissan (-36%) and Peugeot, which reported the best performance in the leaderboard by losing 17.2%. Closing the leaderboard we have Renault -down 2 spots- which registered the worst performance by losing 37.9% this year and Audi losing 20%.
The most sold vehicle this year has been the Toyota Corolla (-15.9%) with 3.705 units sold, followed by the Hyundai Tucson, which lost 15.7% registering 3.828 new sales this year. The Volkswagen Tigua (-7%) closes the podium by jumping 1 spot and reports 2.977 new units sold.
Tables with sales figures
In the tables below we report sales for all Brands, top 10 Manufacturers Group and top 10 Models
