We all know that, for a small country, Ireland’s counties can be radically different from one another. But what can we tell from looking at each county’s car population? That’s not the new cars that have been sold this year in each county, but the cars currently registered and being driven day-in, day-out in each, giving us a more long-term overview of what’s popular in every parish. These figures, which come from Cartell.ie, make for some pretty interesting reading.

Toyota, Ford, and Volkswagen dominate

One thing is abundantly clear from the figures: three brands are dominant in the Irish car market — Toyota, Ford and Volkswagen. As per Cartell.ie’s research, it’s actually two brands and two models that dominate.

In terms of manufacturers, it’s between Toyota and Volkswagen. Toyota is the most-registered brand in ten counties — Cavan, Clare, Cork, Donegal, Galway, Kerry, Limerick, May, Offaly and Tipperary. Volkswagen, meanwhile, is top dog in the other 16, taking Carlow, Dublin, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois, Leitrim, Longford, Louth, Meath, Roscommon, Monaghan, Sligo, Waterford, Westmeath, Wexford and Wicklow.

It’s tempting to see an east-west divide between the two brands, with reliable and solid Toyota taking the more rural western half of the country, and Volkswagen the (arguably) more cosmopolitan east, but then with Volkswagen top in Sligo, and Toyota taking Cavan, that mostly puts that theory to bed.

Some will be surprised to learn that Ford does not take a top brand ranking in any county, but when it comes to individual models, it’s a different story. And in spite of Toyota’s impressive sales performance in Ireland in the past decade, the big-selling Corolla can only take a series of second places — in Clare, Cork, Kerry and Roscommon.

In all counties, the dominant pairing is the Volkswagen Golf and the Ford Focus, and it’s honours-even between these two titans, which take 13 counties each. The Golf is the most-registered car in Carlow, Dublin, Galway, Kildare, Leitrim, Longford, Louth, Meath, Monaghan, Offaly, Sligo, Westmeath and Wicklow. The Focus takes top spot in Cavan, Clare, Cork, Donegal, Kerry, Kilkenny, Laois, Limerick, Mayo, Roscommon, Tipperary, Waterford and Wexford.

Considering that the Ford Focus has not been a best-selling car in the new car market for some time now, it’s testament to both how well the Focus sold in the years prior, and to the fact that Irish car buyers tend to keep cars for longer and longer these days. Indeed, drill down into the lists of most-registered models and you’ll find that many out-of-production cars are still rolling around, such as the 662 examples of the Toyota Auris still registered in Cavan, with another 6,200 of those in Cork. There are also 1,089 Toyota Avensis still registered in Kilkenny, and another 869 in Laois.

SUVs and crossovers not dominant yet

For all that SUVs and crossovers currently dominate the new-car sales lists, the fact that those new sales have been relatively low since the mid-2000s, and the fact of buyers holding onto cars for longer means that only two have really put down a mark on Irish roads. Unsurprisingly, these are the Nissan Qashqai and the Hyundai Tucson.

In new car terms, both have been sales giants in the past decade, and while they don’t dominate the overall registrations to the same extent, they are starting to creep up the rankings. The Qashqai, for example, is the fifth-most registered car in Cavan, Clare, Dublin, Kerry, Limerick, Meath, Waterford and Wicklow, while it takes third place in Louth and Wexford. The Hyundai Tucson tends to be down in the lower half of each county’s league tables, but given its stellar sales performance since 2016, that surely cannot last.

County tastes

Clearly, given that the best-selling cars nationally will reappear locally, the top tens in each county are broadly predictable. The Volkswagen Golf, Ford Focus and Toyota Corolla tend to dominate the top three, while the rest of the top ten is generally taken up by the Volkswagen Passat, the Nissan Qashqai, the Skoda Octavia, the Ford Fiesta and the Toyota Yaris.

However, that does leave some space for individual tastes to shine through in each county. In Donegal, for example, it’s clear that many are shopping cross-border for their cars, as Vauxhall is the ninth-most registered brand. Meanwhile, the rise and rise of the premium car marques has left its fingerprints on Ireland’s registration stats — the Audi A4 breaks into the top ten in Carlow, Cavan, Clare, Galway, Kilkenny, Laois, Leitrim, Limerick, Longford, Mayo, Meath, Monaghan, Offaly, Roscommon, Sligo, Tipperary, Westmeath and Wexford. Meanwhile, the BMW 520 gets top-ten placings in Dublin and Kildare, perhaps unsurprisingly so.

Where luxury brands are concerned, it’s probably equally unsurprising that Dublin rules — there’s clearly money about as BMW, Audi and Mercedes occupy sixth, seventh and eighth places in the brands list.

There are other little regional variations, too. The Opel Astra, once a huge-seller in Ireland but a car whose sales tailed off in recent years, still takes seventh spot in Leitrim, tenth spot in Donegal, Sligo and Waterford, and ninth in Roscommon. The Volkswagen Polo is popular in Dublin and Louth, taking seventh and eighth spots in the registration charts, respectively, while Monaghan seems to be an outlier — the Opel Insignia is the tenth-most registered car there, yet it does not appear in the top ten anywhere else, while the SEAT Leon is the sixth-most registered, and again does not appear in any other county’s top ten.

Peugeot and Renault also do well overall, breaking into the top ten brands in many counties, but without managing to get a single model from either brand into the top ten most registered individual models in any county.

Long turnover times

What these lists of registrations most clearly show, however, is the length of time it takes to make a major impression on the national car park. The Hyundai Tucson, for example, has generally been the best-selling new car in Ireland for eight years now, but it’s — as noted — always in the lower half of county top tens for total registrations. There are no electric models on the list as yet, either, and the Qashqai and Tucson are the only SUVs that break into any county’s top ten. So for all the fuss and furore over both SUVs and electric cars, they still make up only a very small proportion of the cars most of us drive in most parts of Ireland. That will change, of course, but these numbers show it will take time.