Irish car-search patterns show drivers aspire to luxury models
Vehicle digital platform CarsIreland.ie, along with and Cartell.ie have revealed the results of their first joint analysis on the used car market.
For this study CarsIreland.ie looked at the most-popular-searched-cars across its site in February 2021. Those results were then compared with data from Cartell.ie which showed the most popular private models so far in 2021 by total numbers of used-car transactions, for both indigenous and imported vehicles.
Table 1: Most Popular Models Searched on CarsIreland (February 2021)(Source: CarsIreland intelligence)
Table 2: Most Popular Models in the Irish fleet (Private Used and Imported YTD 2021) (Source: Cartell Carstat)
The results show that the top two models, on both lists, were the Volkswagen Golf and the Ford Focus. This highlights the popularity of those models end-to-end in the sales cycle from initial search by the potential buyer through to a completed transaction for the vehicle.
Interestingly, the results also showed that the third-most-popular-model searched on CarsIreland.ie in February was the BMW 5 Series, while, on the other list, the corresponding ranking for that vehicle found the vehicle was the eleventh most popular car sold so far in 2021 – falling outside the top-ten altogether.
This highlights that significant volumes of searches early-on in the buying cycle may be aspirational or may be indicative of the prospective buyer starting off his or her search in the marketplace by focusing on the higher-end of the market, considering values, before ultimately deciding to purchase in a different segment.
Evidence of this trend can be seen further down the list where both the Mercedes-Benz E Class, the BMW 3 Series and the Audi A6 appear in the top-10 on the list of most-searched vehicles on CarsIreland.ie in February while those same vehicles do not appear at all in the list of most popular vehicles by numbers of transactions so far in 2021.