Used Cars: How Do You Choose Yours?

A new survey by car website Carzone.ie has revealed that the Irish can be quite particular when it comes to choosing their new used car. In fact, one of the most interesting facts (for us at least!) to come out of the study is that black is the most searched for car colour on their website followed by silver, red and grey. Meanwhile the Volkswagen Golf remains the most searched for model, closely followed by the BMW 5 and 3 Series, the Ford Focus, Audi A4 and Volkswagen Passat. The report also stated that between the months of January and June of this year 541,237 used cars have already changed hands! According to the research, prospective used car owners are most concerned with the price of fuel and the cost of road tax meaning that diesel cars are the most popular search on the site (coming in at a whopping 81%), while more and more customers are buying German luxury cars.This was shown by a 27% increase in the sales of Audi, followed by a 25% rise in BMW sales and a 24% increase in Mercedes-Benz sales. A concerning fact that springs from the new research however is that 91.5% of Irish motorists have seen another driver texting while driving – a massive issue in terms of road safety and indeed, penalty points. The report also revealed that 77% of those surveyed commute less than 100 kilometres to work. The publication of this bi-annual index by Carzone.ie sees the popular site welcoming some 'cautious optimism' in the used car market as it shows an increase of 19% on the same period last year. Commenting on the findings, general manager at Carzone.ie Warren Cray said: “Without doubt, these results point to a level of optimism in the market as used car transactions continue to rise. More than 100 million searches were carried out on Carzone.ie so far this year alone and we expect this figure to continue rising for the remainder of 2014. “Indeed, over half of respondents to our survey plan to buy a car in the next six months while almost a quarter have already purchased a car this year so this would indicate the market is very much on the rise.”