Motorists in South Africa are under such severe financial pressure that they are deferring and postponing services, which they have been warned can have long-term consequences and cost far more in the future.
This is according to Juan Hanekom, National Director of the South African Motor Body Repairers’ Association (SAMBRA), who told CarTalk that vehicle repair complexity has also gotten increasingly more difficult.
“Besides this, issues like inflation, high fuel costs and interest rates have made it financially unsustainable for a consumer to decide what to do with their car,” he said.
“If you have to choose between putting food on your table or taking care of a maintenance item on your car, you’re going to go for the former. That is just the reality of the situation.”
According to Statistics South Africa (Stats SA), real workshop income has decreased 6.6% year-on-year, highlighting how South African motorists manage their vehicle maintenance under economic pressure.
Hanekom said this can be seen on workshop floors, with fewer motorists taking their cars to be serviced.
“When it comes to motor body repair, we are seeing more people taking cash payouts for the repair of the vehicle and not actually having their vehicles repaired,” he noted.
While repairability should be one of the top factors new car buyers consider, alongside budget, South African buyers are increasingly looking at cars with more features instead.
“We have passed the point of the traditional way of buying a car, where it was primarily safety-feature driven and how reliable the vehicle was, when it focused on the basics,” said Hanekom.
“Vehicles have to a certain degree become commoditised within the space, and people are asking how a car will make their life easier and more comfortable instead.”
He said that this comes with a trade-off, illustrating his point with a story about his own first car – a Nissan Champ – which could be repaired with some wire and pliers, and the fan belt replaced with a scarf.
Hanekom called it a “tin on wheels with no funny electronics”, adding that today cars are so sophisticated that they feature headlights that turn on and off not to blind oncoming pedestrians.
He explained that lots of modern safety features “are great for consumer safety”, but noted that they make repairs more difficult.
“It means there are more sensors and the vehicle is more ‘sensitive’, and that means when something goes wrong with the vehicle, there is just so much more that needs to be repaired and replaced,” Hanekom said.
Compounding costs in the long-run
While not being able to afford a service or routine maintenance is a reality for some vehicle owners, Hanekom warned that they could ultimately face higher costs if issues are left unchecked.
He said that even collision damage that may appear minor could have consequences because of the amount of tech built into modern vehicles.
“Damage might seem minor, or might seem like it’s just a scratch, especially with your plastic panels nowadays that just pop out again and it looks normal,” he said.
However, that damage could affect safety systems like lane-keep assist, automatic braking, or other features that keep a vehicle operating safely.
“With things like this, they compound over time because the one thing breaks, you put it off. The next thing breaks, you put it off,” Hanekom mentioned.
Motorists often wait until a problem becomes serious enough that they have no choice but to address it.
“The behaviour we’ve seen is that consumers will put it off until it’s bad enough to deal with. And by that time, it becomes even more unaffordable,” he said.
“If you can’t afford the R3,000 or R4,000 right now, the R40,000 later is probably less achievable.”
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