Features / 15 August 2023 / Albert du Toit

Best-selling cars built in South Africa – and what they cost

The best-selling, locally-produced vehicle in South Africa is none other than the Toyota Hilux, which is also the best-selling model overall.

To say that local consumers have an affinity for purchasing cars built on South African soil would be an understatement, as all three of the best-selling cars in the country including the VW Polo Vivo and Ford Ranger are produced within our borders.

The southern tip of Africa is a popular destination for automakers with BMW, Ford, Isuzu, Mahindra, Nissan, Toyota, and VW all having factories scattered across the nation pushing out hundreds of thousands of cars every year.

This has one big benefit to domestic consumers, that being lower price tags as they do not have to take into account nearly as much transportation costs as imported vehicles.

For example, in South Africa, the Ford Ranger starts at R494,400, but in the UK, which also gets locally-produced units, the starting price is a much higher £33,930 (R820,200), and in Germany, it comes in at an even higher €40,210 (R837,300).

Similarly, the BMW X3 has a hefty starting price of R981,224 in South Africa. In the UK, it’s £47,295 (R1,142,400), and in Germany, it’s €55,900 (R1,164,000).

Of course, this doesn’t account for the fact that local salaries are generally less competitive than they are abroad, and that price tags from across the pond also include market-specific taxes and margins which may be higher than ours, but it nevertheless illustrates one of the major pros of buying a car built in the same country, maybe even the same city.

Best-selling cars built in South Africa

The list below details the best-selling, locally-produced cars in South Africa with their latest sales figures provided by Naamsa – the automotive business council.

It must be noted that Mercedes-Benz, which produces the C-Class in East London, does not report sales and was therefore not included. As a reference point, the entire Mercedes brand sold 568 vehicles in South Africa in July, according to Naamsa.

BMW, on the other hand, only reports its model-specific sales statistics once every quarter, as such, the X3’s last available sales for June were used for this comparison.

Click on the underlined prices for more information.