Irish Car market in 2021 rises by 18.6% with 105,131 sales, reporting very positive performance all year, except for Q1. Nissan was the only brand to report a fall in sales in the leaderboard, losing 7.7%.
Market Trend
The Irish car market this year recovered in double-digits from the pandemic crash of 2020 and was falling slightly only in Q1.
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%).
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic sales fell in 2020. In fact, 88,324 units have been sold, reporting a decline of 24.6% compared to 2019.
In 2021 the year started negatively for the Irish market, in fact, in Q1 48,175 units have been sold, reporting a 3.6% decrease in sales compared to Q1 2020.
In Q2 sales started growing extremely quickly, reporting a 412.3% increase in sales with 15,877 units due to the incredibly low volumes in Q2 2020, while in Q3 sales kept growing, gaining 16.3% sales with 36,887 units, and in Q4 sales kept gaining 10% with 4,192.
Indeed, Full-Year sales for 2021 have been 105,131, reporting a 18.6% increase compared to 2020.
Brand-wise, this year the new leader Toyota (+30.3%) gained 1.1% market share, overtaking Volkswagen (+18.5%), which did not report a variation in share. Hyundai gained 0.9% share, rising 30.4%. Skoda remained in 4th spot (+21.7%), followed by Ford which gained 9.8%.
Kia jumped 1 spot and gained 26%, followed by Peugeot (+14.1%) and Nissan, which was the only brand to report losses, falling 7.7%. Closing the leaderboard we have BMW -up 3 spots- which registered the best performance by gaining 42.1% this year and Audi gaining 15.9%.
The most sold vehicle this year has been the Hyundai Tucson (+67.5%) with 5,484 units sold, overtaking the Toyota Corolla, which gained 17.8% registering 4,365 new sales this year. The Toyota Yaris (+41.3%) closes the podium by jumping 7 spots and reports 2,706 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
