Ford is currently on a roll in South Africa, selling an impressive 8,274 units in the first quarter of 2025.
This is 713 units more than the Blue Oval sold over the same period in 2024, marking a 9.4% improvement in sales.
The strong year-on-year uptick in purchases was largely thanks to the ever-popular Ranger bakkie, which currently holds a 31.7% share of the double-cab market.
The Ranger’s sales went up by 11.7% during the first quarter of the year, indicating that there is still ample demand for double cabs in the South African auto sphere.
“New-vehicle sales have definitely gained momentum during the first quarter of this year, and this recovery after a couple of challenging years is a positive sign of consumer and business confidence,” said Ryan Searle, Director of Sales Operations, Ford South Africa.
“It is encouraging that the positive results Ford achieved last year have been maintained through the first quarter of 2025, despite the continued influx of new competitor brands and models.”
Broken down by month, the automaker sold a total of 2,467 vehicles in January, 2,900 in February, and 2,907 in March.
Ford also achieved a 6% share of the dealer sales channel in Q1 2025.
Top of the charts
The Ranger is by far and away the company’s best-selling model, accounting for 6,205 sales over the monitored three-month period.
In other words, this bakkie is responsible for 74.9% of all Ford registrations in South Africa.
Of this sum, 5,193 units were double cabs, giving the Ranger a leading 31.7% market share of that segment.
It’s also worth noting that the Ranger is the best-selling used vehicle in the country, according to data published by AutoTrader.
The pickup sold 1,753 pre-owned examples in March – 12% more than the year before – which was enough to place Ford as South Africa’s third-most-popular used brand overall.
Exports
The Ranger, built in Ford’s Silverton factory in Pretoria, is exported to more than 100 markets around the world.
In Q1 2025, a grand total of 10,878 units were shipped overseas, though this is unfortunately a little bit less than the 10,964 units achieved last year.
Importantly, Ford has officially started production on the brand-new Ranger plug-in hybrid (PHEV) at Silverton, which is the only site of its kind anywhere in the world to produce the model.
The PHEV is currently being assembled at a rate of 200 units per day, and they are the first South African Rangers to be exported to the key markets of Australia and New Zealand.
The bakkie is also an important model for the European market, as the Ranger has been the region’s best-selling pickup truck for over 10 years with a 43.6% market share.
The addition of a new PHEV model is therefore expected to increase the Ranger’s European market cap even further, given the demand for new-energy vehicles in the forward-thinking region.
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