They may be small and they may be un-seasonal, but many of Ireland’s car dealers are seeing the very first green shoots of an economic recovery.
Dealers at Airside, the nation’s largest motor park, report a steady increase in demand for used cars and say that prices are starting to creep up as demand exceeds supply in some critical price categories.
Airside Motor Park brings together dealers representing 15 major franchises and around 30,000 new and used cars and commercial vehicles have been sold there since the Park started up, five years ago.
Dealers report a strong demand for used cars in the €5,000 – €12,000 price range but admit that availability is low, so prices are rising. A spokesman for the Park said that the experience of dealers in Airside and in other locations was that the market has ‘bottomed out’, that prices were likely to rise and that dealers were hungry to buy in used cars in the €5,000 – €12,000 price range.
The spokesman pointed to the prices of new cars as being at historically low levels, due to heavy discounting by manufacturers and said that this was probably the very best time to trade up to a newer, more fuel efficient car.