Chery’s rise to stardom in South Africa

Chery had an excellent year in 2024, racking up a total of 19,791 sales in South Africa.

This is the latest in an increasingly high number of registrations for the Chinese carmaker, which has seen a meteoric rise to the top since it relaunched here in late 2021.

Chery’s journey in South Africa

Chery first appeared on our shores in the 2000s but failed to make much of an impression at the time, as local consumers were apprehensive of the idea of buying Chinese cars, leading to the automaker pulling out of the market rather soon after it appeared.

However, attitudes have evidently shifted since then, as Chery returned to South Africa in November 2021 with its first model – the Tiggo 4 Pro crossover.

This was shortly followed by the Tiggo 8 Pro and Tiggo 7 Pro in February and May 2022, respectively, giving customers a choice of an entry-level, mid-range, and upmarket SUV in short order.

Not long after, Chery reported its sales figures to Naamsa The Automotive Business Council for the first time in July 2022, revealing that it had already broken into the top 10 best-selling brands with 1,262 units sold in that month.

This was a remarkable achievement given that the automaker had only been around for eight months at that point, but this was only the first in a series of announcements documenting the company’s rapid ascension in South Africa.

In April 2023, Chery declared that it had sold a total of 5,389 SUVs since its arrival 18 months prior, making it one of the country’s favourite passenger car makers.

The subsequent introduction of new models, including the more affordable Tiggo 4 Pro LiT and the more powerful Tiggo 7 and 8 Pro Max helped the brand to grow even faster, as it later revealed that it had sold twice as many vehicles in 2023 than it in 2022.

By the end of 2022, Chery sold a combined 8,013 models, jumping to an impressive 16,110 in 2023.

This represents an increase of 101% – the highest year-on-year figure the manufacturer has achieved to date.

Chery then launched the Tiggo Cross in October 2024, a new model positioned as a range-topping version of the Tiggo 4 and an alternative to the Tiggo 7.

In November, the brand reported that it experienced an 18.29% uptick in sales for the third financial quarter, going from 4,113 to 4,941, with the Tiggo 4 Pro seeing a particularly large spike in interest of 30.67%.

This brings us to the most recent numbers released by the carmaker, as Chery sold a grand total of 19,971 units last year, improving on its 2023 stats by another 23.96%.

The following table shows a breakdown of Chery’s sales for 2024, including each model in its Tiggo Pro family:

The result of these ever-growing numbers is that Chery is now the eighth best-selling auto company in South Africa, placing ahead of other names like BMW, Mazda, Renault, and Kia.

It speaks to a larger trend of motorists moving away from established brands towards new offerings from Asia, particularly from China and India, as households are battling to find affordable transport in these tough economic times.

Case in point is the Tiggo 4 Pro, Chery’s best-seller, which is one of the only SUVs you can buy in the country for less than R300,000.

It also has a more powerful engine and a longer equipment list than other entry-level cars like the locally-produced VW Polo Vivo, making for a value-for-money proposition that is difficult to compete with.