Total car sales last year breached the 140,000 mark, new figures from the Central Statistics Office show today.
A total of 142,688 new private cars were licensed for the first time in 2016, an increase of 17.8% compared with the previous year.
Despite the strong increase, the number of new cars licensed still remains below the most recent peak of 2007 when 180,754 new vehicles were licensed.
The used car import market did very well in 2016, with just under 70,000 units shipped in here - up by almost 50% on 2015.
That was the highest annual number of used cars imported here on record, which reflected the drop in sterling in the last few months.
The CSO also noted an increase of 22.6% in the number of new goods vehicles licensed in 2016 to 28,117 - the highest since 2008's figure of 31,459.
Today's CSO figures show that Volkswagen was the most popular make of new private cars licensed last year with 15,163 models licensed.
It was followed by Toyota with sales of 14,772, Hyundai (14,682), Ford (14,208) and Nissan (11,561).
Together these five makes represent 49.3% of all new private cars licensed.
The CSO also said that seven out of every ten new private cars licensed in 2016 were diesel, and almost eight out of every ten new private cars licensed were in the lowest CO2 emissions band A.
Meanwhile, the number of new cars licensed in December was down by almost a fifth on the same month in the prior year, today's CSO figures show.
