LOWER list prices and a wider range of models continued to propel demand for the parallel imported car in 2007 to a new high.

It accounted for an unprecedented one out of every five new cars sold in Singapore last year, The Business Times reported yesterday.

A total of 22,304 parallel imports (PIs) were registered, according to the Land Transport Authority - a substantial 38 per cent increase over the previous year.

And the jump in market share becomes evenmore significant given that the total number of new cars last year came to 106,531 units - or an 8.8 per cent fall from the 116,849 cars in 2006.

The perennially popular Toyota is again the top PI make, but what surprised was that grey imports of the traditional No. 2 brand - Honda - more than doubled its volume over 12 months.

Toyota PIs notched up 10,451 units, about the same as the year before. But Honda raced up to 9,010 units for a 120 per cent jump in sales. This was due to the popularity of one model, the Honda Stream compact MPV.

Last year, PIs collectively moved 4,062 of these in the first full year of sales (parallel importers first brought in the model in the last quarter of 2006).

By contrast, authorised distributor Kah Motor only launched it in middle of last year and sold just 1,220 units for the year.

The white-hot demand for the Stream nudged the older Toyota Wish into the runner-up position. Last year, the previous bestseller only managed 2,807 units, significantly down from the whopping 6,628 in the previous year.

Another brand which saw higher PI sales was Suzuki. It was also ranked No 3 in 2006, but it was its 150 per cent jump to 1,658 units last year which has to be the most interesting aspect of its performance.

The combined total of 16,137 grey imports in 2006 was already a record for the industry.

Back in 2004, the PI trade registered only about 4,000 cars after the Government acted on rampant under-declaration and other high jinks.

This number was a big drop from the preceding year's estimated 7,500 units and was all the more striking given that the overall passenger car market was experiencing strong growth due to ever-increasing COE quotas.

But in 2005, the PI scene engineered a sharp about-turn and sales of cars jumped back up to 6,282 units. It rose even higher in 2006 before culminating in the 2007 boom.

Against the contraction in the total industry volume for passenger cars last year, the market share for the PI segment is now a whopping 20 per cent, or one in every five new cars sold in 2007.

Compare this with 2006's 13.8 per cent, which roughly translates to one in seven cars.