The Peugeot Landtrek could become a lot more affordable in South Africa once it goes into production on local soil in the early stages of 2026.
Much of the cost of new cars nowadays is attributed to import taxes, with Naamsa the Automotive Business Council stating that these tariffs are responsible for as much as 18% of the selling price of imported entry-level cars, going as high as 42% for premium vehicles.
Take, for example, the Ford Ranger. The most affordable locally produced Ranger Double Cab is priced at R522,600 in South Africa.
In the United Kingdom, one of Ford South Africa’s top export destinations, the cheapest Ranger Double Cab costs £36,690 (incl. VAT) which amounts to R849,122 at current exchange rates.
This isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison due to the UK’s tax structures and the specifications of its bakkies being different than ours, nevertheless, it still illustrates the point that local is lekkerder than import when it concerns car prices.
With the Landtrek set to enter production in early 2026 at Stellantis’ new R3-billion factory in the Eastern Cape, it will no longer be subjected to the enormous tariffs imposed on cars sourced from other countries, and it could therefore become a lot more wallet-friendly.
At present, the French double cab sells for a minimum of R625,900 in South Africa.
However, given that it has been on sale in its current form since 2021, it’s expected that the model that will be produced in South Africa will be the facelifted Landtrek that will have newer technologies and features.
We can’t look into a crystal ball to see what this new bakkie will cost, probably not even Peugeot knows at the moment.
That said, local buyers can still look forward to a more appealing value proposition in the South African-built Landtrek come 2026.
Landtrek expansion
Stellantis – the owner of brands such as Peugeot, Opel, Fiat, Maserati, and Jeep – has chosen South Africa as the destination of one of its newest vehicle factories due to its strategic geographic placement allowing the company to expand further into markets such as the Middle East and other African nations.
The insatiable demand for bakkies in the country also motivated the decision to produce the Landtrek within our borders instead of one of the dozens of other vehicles under the Stellantis umbrella.
“As part of our strategy for Dare Forward 2030 we will support our pickup market for the Stellantis region with manufacturing within the MEA region,” Stellantis South Africa confirmed to TopAuto.
“Based on the strong and consistent automotive policy and the well-established pickup component supply base in South Africa and potential of the pickup market in Africa, we felt South Africa is ideally suited for our new industrial operation in the region.”
The end goal is to obtain a 22% market share in the MEA region and to have 90% of the vehicles Stellantis supplies to the Middle East be manufactured in Southern Africa.
In this endeavour, Peugeot will also introduce new single-cab and lower-spec manual double-cab models to the Landtrek family in the near future.
“Today we have a very limited range of two variants of the Peugeot Landtrek available for the South African market,” said Stellantis.
“With the localization of the Peugeot Landtrek we will expand both model and powertrain line-up, and certainly look forward to being able to compete in the very competitive South African pickup market.”
Stellantis aims to have the Landtrek factory up and running by the end of 2025 with the first example to roll off the assembly line in the early months of 2026.
The plan is to manufacture 50,000 units per year, though this could potentially go as high as 90,000 units depending on demand, with the vision being to produce 1.4 million units by 2035.
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