Registration system overhaul has failed to break car sales seasonality, says distributor

The biannual registration system has failed to break the seasonality in new-car sales and the Government should consider returning to the old system, according to a leading motor distributor.

Hyundai Ireland's managing director, Stephen Gleeson, says the introduction of a second registration in July has added nothing to the market and he would be happy to see it revert to the old annual system.

As buyers prepare to pick up their 152-registered cars from July 1st, Mr Gleeson said: “What we are we are seeing is July has basically become the month when all the May, June and July sales are being registered. [Under the new regime] we are seeing May and June becoming the new ‘November and December’ from a registration point of view.

“The seasonality of our market today is not really different to the old single-plate system. If you look at 2012 the new-car market was 90 per cent done by the end of July, and for 2014 it was 88 per cent. [That’s] not exactly a paradigm shift.”

Before the change to the January-and-July registration format the Irish motor trade complained that the vast majority of new-car sales were bundled together in the first quarter of the year. It meant dealers were rushed with customers at the start of the year and then had little new-car showroom activity from early autumn.

Following lobbying from the industry the Government introduced the current biannual system in 2014. Mr Gleeson argues that this hasn’t delivered the promised evening-out of sales across the year.

Hyundai has risen to fourth place in the Irish market so far this year. Mr Gleeson said pre-sales of 152-registered Hyundais was going well and he expected a minimum of 30 per cent growth compared with the second half of last year.