Louth car industry facing challenges
CAR SALES WERE DOWN OVER 4% IN FEBRUARY IN NEW SIMI FIGURES
THE challenges facing the motor industry emerged again at the end of February, with a further decline in sales over the month.
The latest figures from the Society for the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI) showed that 372 new cars were sold across County Louth last month.
The figure was a 4.12% fall on the 388 cars sold in the same month of 2017, according to the society.
The beginning of a new year is traditionally the busiest for car dealers, and in January this year there were 879 new cars sold, only a slight reduction of 0.689% on the sales figures in January 2017.
The SIMI survey reveals that the biggest selling car in Louth was Ford with 41 cars sold.
This was followed by Toyota (38), Kia (35), Nissan (34) Peugeot (34), Skoda (28), Volkswagen (28), Dacia (25), Hyundai (24) and Renault (24).
The Dacia Duster was the most popular model sold last month with over twenty models bought.
This was followed by the Nissan Qashqai (18), Peugeot 3008 (14), Ford Fiesta (13), Kia Sportage (13), Hyundai Tucson (13), Skoda Octavia (12), Toyota C-HR (11), Ford Focus (10) and Volkswagen Tiguan (9).
Once again the number of diesel models sold fell by 15.04% from 266 last February to 226 this year.
By contrast petrol sales rose from 108 to 128 (18.52%), while petrol electric sales were up 54.55% from 11 to 17.
Grey was the most popular colour with 137 models sold, followed by red/maroon (65), white/ivory (60), black (58) and blue (38).
Last year there were 2,774 cars sold in Co Louth, which was down 12.02% on 2016.
Commenting on the figures SIMI Director General, Alan Nolan stated “New car registrations for the month of February delivered a steady performance when compared with the same month last year, however registrations overall remaining 3.5% down year to date.’
He explained that there was a slight increase in the light commercial vehicle sector which ‘reflects the strong economic growth for businesses, particularly in the local economy, while HGVs which may be more impacted by Brexit concerns, remain down 11%.’
‘ The Brexit impact is also visible in the continued growth in used car imports which were 15.7% up in February.’
The SIMI Director added: ‘ The Diesel market share is continuing to move back toward more traditional levels in new car sales, having reached an artificially high peak of 73% in 2014, it is currently standing at 57% so far in 2018.
‘As a consequence of this shift, as SIMI had previously indicated, the average CO2 emissions for new cars registered this year have increased by 2.1%.’