People in Galway are turning their backs on their county colours — sales of maroon or red cars dropped by 20% in the first eight months of this year.

Sales of new cars in Galway overall so far this year are down slightly on last year’s figures, according to a new report from the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI).

A total of 4,378 registrations were recorded in the city and county during the first eight months of the year, a fall of almost 3% from the total of 4,500 during the same period last year.

Electric cars suffered the largest decrease in sales in Galway, with their numbers plummeting by more than 40% year-on-year, from 754 in the first eight months of 2023 to just 447 so far this year.

Galway sales now make up one in 25 of all new car registrations in Ireland.

Nationally, new car registrations during the year to date were down 0.9% (112,171) on the same period last year, with sales in August down 8.4% (7,567) when compared to August 2023.

Almost one in five of all registrations in Galway were for Toyota cars, well ahead of Skoda (whose sales were up by 43%) and Volkswagen, both on 11% share of the market. The next most popular marques were Hyundai, Kia and Audi.

The Hyundai Tucson was the favourite car among Galway buyers this year, followed by Toyota’s Rav4 and Yaris Cross.

In terms of vehicle type, more than 1,400 medium SUVs were registered, followed by small SXUVs (almost 1,200) and small standard cars (685). Almost one-third were hatchbacks.

Sales of Diesel cars were up 7% to lead the market with 1,319 registrations, followed by petrol cars, which saw a small drop to 1,105, and petrol electric (hybrid) sales increased by 13% to 1,085.

Cars with automatic transmission (2,923) saw more than double the sales of manual cars (1,450).

And grey is the colour of choice in Galway — by some distance, with two in every five cars sold that colour, and almost twice as many as black, the next most popular colour. And people in Galway are turning their backs on their county colours — sales of maroon or red cars dropped by 20% to fifth place, behind blue and white.

And grey is the colour of choice in Galway — by some distance, with two in every five cars sold that colour, and almost twice as many as black, the next most popular colour.

Next in order of popularity were blue and white/ivory . . . with the county colours of maroon (included with red) coming a poor fifth, suffering a fall in popularity of more than 20% in the past year.