Carzone has released its bi-annual report summarising the Irish car market in 2012, in which 889,441 used cars changed hands. A lot of the information gathered is expected, but there were a few surprises along the way as well.
Firstly, the predictable stuff. With the continual increase in living costs, it comes as no surprise that the most common search online is for a diesel engined car. In fact, 80 per cent of searches specified a diesel motor - despite there being an equal share of petrol and diesel cars available for sale online. In addition, drivers are keeping their cars for longer. As revealed by Cartell.ie, the average age of the Irish car fleet is up to eight years. Motorists spend €3,745 per year to keep the fleet on the road, too.
On a more surprising note, the most popular vehicle search for 2012 was the BMW 3 Series, with the Volkswagen Golf coming in second. It just goes to show that even though money is tight, buyers still want that exclusivity on their driveways. It would also seem that a majority of Ireland's population expect to win the lottery sometime soon, as searches for exotica such as Ferraris, Astons and Lamborghinis make up a large proportion of the website's traffic. Carzone confirms that, while there are only 17 Lamborghinis registered in the whole country, over 2,000 searches are recorded per month for each model on sale.
Other information collected by Carzone makes for interesting reading. While the used car market was so buoyant in 2012, it seems that buyers don't use work's time to search for cars. Peak activity on the website occurs between 20:00 and 22:00, with app activity continuing on to around midnight. Of these searches, 71 per cent feature a specific make and model, and 14 per cent specify a 2008 model car.
Full details of this year's report can be found on the company's website at www.carzone.ie.