Monthly statistics on new car sales are issued every month by the SIMI and tend to focus on two issues. Firstly, the amount of new cars sold in the month and year to date and secondly, how these sales are split by type of power unit, with particular reference to electric vehicles. Another statistic provided by SIMI and of particular relevance to the aftermarket, are the stats on used car imports. Remember how Brexit effectively collapsed the UK used car import market? Well, as ever, the Irish motor trade got creative and used car imports are thriving.

So, for the record, here is the state of play as of the end of October, and with November and December not very active registration months, this is a pretty good indicator for the year. New car sales in October were 2,420, 8.8% up on 2023. Year-to-date new car sales stand at 119,663, which is 1.2% down on 2023 sales of 121,134. Of these 2024 YTD sales 16,654, (13.92%) were battery electric vehicles. This is over 25% down on the 22,329 pure EVs sold up to the end of October 2023, which was 18.43% of new registrations. Both petrol and diesel registrations have held steady at 30 and 22% respectively, with mild hybrid (MHEV) and plug-in hybrid (PHEV) showing the most growth.

Of course what these new car sales statistics really tell us, in terms of the Irish aftermarket, is how things might look in independent garages in four or five years time. The indications are that by 2028/29, independent workshops will be looking at a situation, where probably less than one in ten cars coming in are pure EV, with 90% having some kind of internal combustion engine.

For independents therefore, the advice is to be EV aware and to develop the capability to work on EVs, but not to expect an avalanche of jobs. Realistically, with uncertainty over the ICE phase out remaining, it will be well into the late 2030’s before pure EV’s become the dominant player, in terms of cars that independent garages are working on.

The used car import numbers for October were 5,709, 38% up on 2023 and 3,288 higher than new registrations. Year-to-date used imports are 53,446 which is more than 25% up on the 42,461 used imports for the end of October 2023. To give some indication of how this compares to previous years, pre-pandemic and before the impact of Brexit took hold, YTD used imports in October 2019 stood at 93,892. By 2022, UK import complications meant the October YTD figure had fallen to 40,752.

During 2023 and so far in 2024, vehicle importers are sourcing far more cars from Japan. Indeed, so far this year 25,388 (47.50%) of used cars have come from Japan, 13,609 (25.46%) from the UK, 13,905 (26.02%) from the Rest of the World and 544 (1.02%) from Europe.

In terms of the car brands being imported, the dominant marques are VW with a 21% share, Audi with 13% and BMW with 12%. Toyota, Mercedes and Honda are the other brands with more than a 5% share and in total, these top 6 manufacturers account for some 67% of all imports.

Interestingly, the profile of cars coming from Japan has totally transformed in recent years. Whereas before, these would have been vehicles from mainly Japanese manufacturers, they are now more from German makers such as VW and Audi. For example 8,600 VWs have been imported from Japan this year compared to just 61 in 2015, while 3,699 Audi models have come from Japan compared to zero in 2015.

The top 5 imported models are the VW Golf, VW Polo, Audi A3, BMW 3 Series and BMW 5 series. The days of Japanese models under different names being imported in big numbers are now largely over, with the exception of the Honda Fit, the equivalent to the Jazz, which is still very popular.

Although category descriptions are not always totally accurate on import data, official figures class 58% as being hatchbacks, while only 4.8% are categorised as MPVs. This indicates that Irish buyers still have a considerable appetite for more compact, economical models, despite manufacturers trying to drive new car sales in a different direction.

With regards to the power units of imports so far this year, 46.6% have been petrol, 25.3% diesel, 2.6% battery electric and 25.4% some form of hybrid. This means 97.4% of imports have some form of internal combustion engine.

Lastly, the age profile of the cars coming in makes very interesting reading for independent garages. 90% of imports are over 2 years old, 81% over 3 years old and 64% are over 6 years old. This means a huge volume of older cars coming into the Irish market that are prime targets for independent garages and this is a trend that currently shows no signs of slowing down.

So while the EV debate goes on, independent garages can be confident that the internal combustion engine is going to be the driving force in the aftermarket for many, many, years to come.

You can download  or view the original article as it appeared in the December 2024/January 2025 edition of Autobiz magazine.