Almost 2,000 cars sold on first day of new number plate

The first day of the new 132 number plate saw 1,927 new cars registered; more than was registered during the month of June. The number of registrations on Monday, July 1st also exceeded the registrations in the first working day of January this year, normally the busiest day of the year for new cars.

The strong first-day figures for the new number plate will encourage dealers who have seen the new car market fall 20 per cent so far this year. There has been concern that the dramatic fall in June figures - down 73 per cent to 1,672 - would make it hard for the new 132 to recoup the lost sales.

Alan Nolan, director general of SIMI said: "Feedback from dealerships had indicated a lot of interest in the run up to the new plate but it's always hard to gauge just how much until we see the actual registrations coming through. As it's the first year of the new dual registration, we hope that the momentum continues for the coming weeks and months."

One distributor told The Irish Times that while it’s unlikely any pick-up in sales this month will make up for the 20 per cent drop so far this year, a good indication of its success will be if the combined June and July figures for this year are up on the same two months last year. For June and July 2012 there were 10,772 new registrations. With just 1,672 last month, it would need to be an exceptionally good July to match what was sold in the two months last year.