Licensing of new cars rose to 173,519 in the first seven months of this year to reverse a trend of declining sales since 2001.
The figures, which were released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) today, showed that there were 14,144 new private cars licenced in July 2004, up 6.2 per cent on the same month in 2003 when 13,313 were licenced.
The data show that imports of second-hand cars to the Republic rose by almost 51 per cent last month, as compared to figures for July last year.
The highest number of new private cars registered last month and categorised by make were Toyota (at 1,846), Ford (1,703), Volkswagen (1,491), Nissan (1,513), Renault ( 978), Opel (970).
