How to save up to R821,000 when buying a Mercedes-Benz in South Africa

It’s possible to save up to R821,000 when buying a Mercedes-Benz in South Africa, provided you are willing to shop for a pre-owned model.

This is according to new data from AutoTrader, which compared the new and second-hand prices for a variety of different cars.

While it is hardly surprising to learn that a used car costs less than a new one, the intriguing part is that you often don’t need to go back more than a year or two to save a considerable amount, depending on the model.

Even in the sub-R300,000 bracket, it is possible to save around R50,000 by looking for an equivalent pre-owned car sold in the last five years.

Luxury models, on the other hand, can often be subjected to extreme depreciation that can shave hundreds of thousands of rands off the price tag in just a few years.

The following table shows AutoTrader’s new-vs-used car price data analysis for June 2025:

Note that the Mercedes CLE is a new vehicle the automaker introduced to replace both the C-Class and E-Class coupes; hence, it is listed twice to compare both models.

An example of a model that holds its value well is the Toyota Corolla Cross, which only lost an average of R26,000 on models sold between 2020 and 2024.

This is easily explained by the fact that the Corolla is one of the most popular cars in the country, meaning there is a high demand keeping the value of used examples relatively stable.

In contrast, a less familiar option like the Honda Amaze can lose roughly R50,000 in the span of five years even though it was a rather affordable sedan to begin with.

It’s worth noting that not all of the cars listed above are apples-to-apples comparisons, as is the case with the Jaecoo J7 and Omoda C9 hybrids.

These are both new additions to their respective series that launched in South Africa last month, meaning they haven’t been around long enough to generate used market data.

In these cases, the comparison is more of a way to highlight how much a person needs to spend to own one of these cars, and whether it is worth paying more to secure the new model, or if it’s better to settle for a used example with a different engine.

More to consider

Of course, used cars come with their own concerns, as you need to weigh the price savings against the age and mileage of a second-hand equivalent.

This is the average mileage and registration year for each of the cars mentioned above, as provided by AutoTrader:

If you want a Mercedes-Benz at a greatly reduced price, the reality is you’ll need to settle for a model with a fairly high age and mileage of 7 years and 70,000km.