What's the news?
The average age of an Irish car is reducing, according to the latest report by vehicle history experts at Cartell.ie. Cartell has been monitoring the age of the national vehicle fleet every year, on the 1st of September, since 1999.
The latest findings show that, from September 2017 to September 2018, the average age of a car fell slightly from 8.70 years to 8.54 years. The variances were a little bigger if you drill down into the specifics of the fleet. For imported cars, the average age actually fell by a third of a year, or 121 days, from 9.14 years to 8.81 years in the same period.
For 'native', or original Irish, registrations, the fall was smaller: 48 days, from 8.59 years to 8.46 years.
While the age of the national vehicle fleet has a sort of natural oscillation as new cars are bought and older cars are retired, Cartell.ie says that the latest fall is quite notable, and is a demonstration of the effect that the recent surge of cheap, imported cars from the UK is having on the Irish fleet.
John Byrne, General Counsel, Cartell.ie, commented: "The impact of imports has been even more noticeable in 2018 as owners retire older native vehicles and look to replace them with newer imported vehicles in ever increasing numbers. The imported fleet age has dropped by 121 days in the past year - that's a sizeable drop. Even the native fleet is getting younger, showing a decline of 48 days in the last 12 months as people are moving up the years. In terms of the outlook for 2019, Brexit certainly makes it more difficult to make predictions, but we would still expect to see the age of the fleet continue to fall in the near term as buyers look to replace older vehicles.
"In January 2015 Cartell released data which showed the age of the private fleet in Ireland had levelled-off significantly for the first time in over 10 years - supporting our view the market was then going into recovery."
Anything else?
In November 2017, Cartell.ie reported the age of the native fleet stood at 8.62 years while the age of the imported fleet stood at 9.02 years, which was the youngest recorded age for the imported fleet since July 2011. The overall age of the private fleet in Ireland (native and imported) stood at 8.7 years, representing a decline of 80 days since January 2017. That equivalent figure now stands at 8.54 years representing a decline of 59 days since those figures were released. The imported fleet is now at its youngest level since 1st of August 2010.