This article is from page 12 of the 2011-08-23 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 12 JPG
CAR sales dropped in Clare during the summer months, but hopes are high that they will recover for the remaining four months of the year.
Overall, new car sales across the county increased by 5.2 per cent since the start of the year. Up to last Friday, there were 1,984 new cars registered in County Clare, compared with 1,886 during the same period last year.
The figures from www.motorcheck. ie show that while car sales increased in Clare in May and June, they decreased in July and August. The increase in May was 2.5 per cent; in June – when car sales surged prior to the end of the popular scrappage scheme – the increase was a massive 73.9 per cent; the decrease in July was 43.5 per cent, while the drop so far in August is along the lines of 90 per cent. There were 136 new cars sold during the first 19 days of August of last year, compared to just 14 this year.
The number of cars purchased in the ‘all cars’ category – which includes new and used cars – has increased by 3.3 per cent so far this year. However, there was a reduction of 77.1 per cent in this category so far this month. There was a decrease of 16.1 per cent in July; an increase of 62.1 per cent in June and an increase of one per cent in May.
In Clare, the Ford Focus is the most popular choice of car, followed by the Nissan Qashqai, the Ford Fiesta, the Volkswagen Golf, Toyota Corolla, Nissan Juke, Toyota Avensis and Volkswagen Passat.
Silver is the most popular colour of car, followed by black, grey, blue and red, in Clare.
Nationally, the number of cars sold in July decreased by 35 per cent, compared with July 2010. However, the figure for July 2010 included cars in the scrappage scheme, which came to an end in June of this year.