Best-selling car brands in South Africa

The South African motoring scene experienced its best sales month thus far in October 2024, with 47,942 units sold.

This marks a 5.5% increase from the same month last year, which moved 45,418 vehicles.

Of course, Toyota is still leading the pack with an impressive 11,891 sales, an improvement of just over 1,000 units compared to its September figures.

A similar gain was achieved by several other automakers in October such as VW, which took second place thanks to a respectable 6,340 purchases.

Suzuki’s numbers jumped by nearly 1,000 units to reach a total of 6,006, and Ford overtook Hyundai to reach fourth place again with 2,965 customers versus the latter’s 2,913.

Isuzu is still comfortably holding on to sixth place with 2,251 sales, and Chery and GWM switched places with the former moving up to seventh while the latter was bumped down to the eighth slot.

That being said, the Chinese rivals are very close to one another in terms of volume, as Chery moved 1,831 units while GWM sold 1,796 units.

The final two entries consisted of Renault with 1,734 purchases, and Kia, which managed to knock Nissan out of the top 10 with 1,508 sales.

Looking at all the vehicles sold in South Africa last month, 80.4% were from dealership sales while another 14.8% went to the rental industry. Another 2.6% were swept up by corporate fleets, and the government accounted for the remaining 2.2%.

Passenger cars accounted for 34,228 units in October – a year-on-year improvement of 14.5% – while light commercial vehicles like bakkies and vans saw a reduction of 12.7%, ending with 10,791 units.

Unfortunately, while domestic sales were very strong for the most part last month, the same cannot be said of exports, which dropped by a worrying 42.6% compared to October 2023 with only 23,342 models shipped.

The Automotive Business Council believes the local passenger car sales win is the result of positive consumer sentiment thanks to declining inflation levels, combined with lower petrol prices.

The poor export performance, on the other hand, is attributed to economic stagnation in the European Union, which is South Africa’s largest overseas market.

The EU is also ramping up its environmental regulations, limiting the types of cars it can import.