With half of 2004 already gone and new car sales climbing nearly 9 per cent on the same period of last year, it could appear that the Irish motor industry is in revival mode. But all is not what it seems.
The small print statistics for the six months show a huge 33 per cent increase in car rental business, in other words highly discounted sales to car hire companies.
In the first half of last year, around 13,500 registrations came through the rental companies but this year the figure has leaped to around 18,000. The 8.7 per cent increase to this year's cumulative figure of 121,634 amounts to just over 10,500 cars.
According to an industry analyst, "if you take out the extra 4,500 cars from the 10,000 and also include SUVs registered as passenger cars which are up by 4,000, there's really not that much growth around in pure car sales." With the exception of Toyota, all the major volume importers recorded huge percentage increases in car rental activity. The Toyota figure was below 5 per cent.
"It's not really our kind of business," says Dave Shannon, the managing director of Toyota Ireland. "We have never been big in rental, our focus is on our retail customers." The first half of the year accounts for 75 per cent of all new car sales and the apparent buoyancy of the market has prompted Eddie Murphy, the chairman and managing director of Ford to predict a total market of 160,000 new car registrations this year .
It's Toyota which is leading the 2004 market, with 15,316 cars and a 12.6 per cent market share, ahead of Ford with 13,865 cars or 11.4 per cent. Dave Shannon is a mite more cautious predicting full year sales of 158,000. "That's upped from last December when I was predicting 154,000." Denis McSweeney who is Ford's marketing director, isn't conceding yet that 2004 will be Toyota's year. "We are still fighting it out with them. We are encouraged by our amazing run-out success with Focus which is still accounting for 5.5per cent of the total market. Run-out models just don't normally perform like this." Focus Mark II goes on sale at the end of the year, in readiness for the 2005 market.
Among premium brands, John Hayes, who is Audi's sales manager, says Audi Irish sales were up 20 per cent in the first six months, 2,630 against 2.177 last year. "It's the best six months in our 37 year history in Ireland and we can confidently expect it to be our best year." Audi's Bavarian competitor, BMW is 27 per cent ahead on last year with 3,628 sales against 2,854 last year and Michael Nugent, director of sales and marketing of the new Munich-controlled company claims it is the fastest growing of the big three German prestige brands. As for Mercedes-Benz, it is slightly down on 2003 with 3,776 three-pointed star cars going on Irish roads, compared with 3,908 last year.