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Car history expert Cartell.ie has said that sales of used cars in Ireland peaked above 1 million units last year, the highest level since the company began keeping records. Cartell.ie says that it "considered all transactions for private cars (including imports) in the market in 2016 including private to private sales, imported by private, trade to trade sales, trade-ins, and trade to private transactions."
The total number of transactions for the year was 1,014,376 up from 943,995 in 2015 (that's an increase of seven per cent). Cartell next examined the total number of transactions in the used market for all vehicle types and found that 2016 had been a record year with 1,200,695. This was up from 1,125,816 in 2015.
John Byrne, Legal and Public Relations Manager, Cartell.ie said: "The used vehicle market had a record year in 2016. We recorded over 1 million transactions for private cars - the first time we have reached this milestone since Cartell.ie started recording results. Overall the used market was up seven per cent year-on-year and we anticipate further growth in 2017."
The most popular used purchases were the Ford Focus, Volkswagen Golf, Volkswagen Passat, Toyota Corolla, Toyota Avensis, Opel Astra, Audi A4, Ford Fiesta, Toyota Yaris and Volkswagen Polo.