Car sales up by almost 100% in April

The recovery in car sales continues to gather pace.  The figures just released by the Society of Irish Motor Industry (SIMI) show that new car sales in April 2010 were 95.4% ahead of sales in the same month last year.  This is on top of the increases we have identified for the first three months of the year.

Month	2009	2010	Change	% Change
January	15,799	16,595	+796	+5.0%
February	8,883	12,306	+3,423	+38.5%
March	7,764	13,813	+6,049	+77.9%
April	4,373	8,544	+4,171	+95.4%
Total	36,819	51,258	+14,439	+39.2%

We can see that annual changes have increased for each of the first four months of the year.  For the year to date 14,439 (or 39.2%) more cars have been sold than in the same four months of 2009 according to the SIMI data. 
Although there is an improvement, sales are still substantially below the levels seen prior to the current downturn.  Year-to-date sales are 52.0% below the 2008 levels and 56.4% below the 2007 peak.  This is shown in the graph below with an alternative representation of the data to April available here and full-year data here.

These numbers will provide a strong boost to retail sales figures.  The March Retail Sales Index is due to be released by the CSO later this week.  The 77.9% annual increase in new car sales seen in March will provide strong boost for the All-Businesses Retail Sales Index with motor trades making up 29.0% of the March Index. What will be more interesting will be the performance of the Retail Sales Index excluding motor trades.
SIMI also claim that ‘only’ 5,000 of the almost 51,000 new car sold have seen buyers avail of the €1,500 VRT scrappage scheme rebate.  They also say the following:

An additional €60m in VAT and VRT for Government coffers has been generated from new car sales even after subtracting scrappage refunds.

It is hard to believe that is additional €60 million in VAT and VRT is due to the scrappage scheme.  To generate €60 million in revenue the 5,000 cars sold under the scrappage scheme would have to contribute €12,000 each VAT and VRT and €13,500 if we were to account for the €1,500 rebate.