Some cars just have it sussed from the off

IT’S amazing how one car can grab the public’s imagination and suddenly rocket a brand up the sales chart. Hyundai had been having a few good years anyway, but the Tucson (rebranded as the iX35 for a few years before reverting to its old name) went stratospheric almost from the off and soon became Ireland’s bestselling car. It topped the bestseller lists for 2016 and 2017, and was the bestseller in January of this year.

But drill down into the 2018 figures and you’ll see another contender emerging. Peugeot recorded an astonishing sales increase of 71% in January, thanks largely to the halo effect of the 3008 SUV. When I say ‘astonishing’, I actually mean it. Kia recorded the next highest spike in sales – at 5.8% – and the only other brand to see an increase was Skoda, with 1.4%.

The problem Peugeot has now is supplying demand. Again from the off, the 3008 grabbed the attention like no Peugeot for years. At the end of 2016, even before it arrived on these shores, I named it my personal car of the year, following a test drive from Bologna in Italy to the summit of the tiny republic of San Marino.

I loved everything about it, especially the brilliant iCockpit display and the safety aids that made driving on the motorway semi-autonomous.

People often say to me that my head must be turned by the foreign travel, great hotels and top restaurants that go with motoring journalism, but if you saw the main course of miserable octopus we were served at dinner on that launch – it looked like a lightly grilled plunger – you’d realise just how much work the car had to do in order to compensate.

Anyway, the jurors for the European Car of the Year award also made it their top pick a few months later, and the factory had to go from two to three shifts a day to meet Europe-wide demand.

Here, sales director Colin Sheridan says this is the strongest performance Peugeot has recorded in Ireland since 2007 – and it’s mostly thanks to the 3008.