Hungarians' Favorite Car Models

Although the Suzuki Vitara has been the market leader among new cars in Hungary since its launch in 2015, the Opel Astra, another model with Hungarian roots, is the favorite in the used car market. Not only did it top the list of domestic changes of ownership and second-hand imports in 2021, it also registered the most searches on the biggest vehicle ad site Használtautó.hu (‘Used cars’), winning the Most Popular Model of the Year award with 8.76 million searches. It was followed by the Suzuki Swift with 6.67 million searches and the Skoda Octavia with almost 6.5 million searches.

The Best-selling Model of the Year award, launched by Használtautó.hu last year, has been extended to include two sub-categories in response to the increased interest in hybrid and pure electric models. Both categories were led by the overall favorite, the Astra, which accounted for more than 10% of all searches: the BMW i3, which is the most popular electric car on the website, was searched for more than 950,000 times, the second Nissan Leaf almost 705,000 times and the Renault Zoe almost 413,000 times.

In contrast, the hybrid podium is dominated by Toyota: the world's best-selling hybrid, the Prius, tops the podium with almost 925,000 searches, the RAV4, now in its second generation as a hybrid, is second with over 365,000 searches, and the Corolla, the latest hybrid but the most popular on the new car market, is third with 307,000.

More and more people are looking for alternative drive models
While five years ago the share of petrol cars, diesels and hybrids in the new car market was 62%, 36% and 2% respectively, by 2021 the share of pure petrol models fell to 37% and 16% for diesels, while the share of hybrids (partly due to the uptake of soft hybrids) will have risen to 43%.

The share of pure electric cars doubled in 2021, accounting for 4% of sales last year. The situation is far less rosy for imports, which last year were still more important than new car registrations, and much less about alternative powertrains: 55% of used cars imported, most of them over 10 years old, are petrol and 37% diesel, and although the share of hybrids is steadily increasing, it is 5% for hybrids and only 3% for electrics.