Next-gen Ford Ranger and VW Amarok – First 9 months of sales in South Africa compared

The second-gen VW Amarok has been on sale in South Africa since mid-March 2023, roughly three months less than its half-sibling, the sixth-gen Ford Ranger which made its debut in December 2022.

With both these bakkies sitting on Ford’s T6 platform and driven by near-identical powertrains, their unique selling points are brand, interior and exterior packaging, dealer incentives, after-sales agreements, and last but certainly not least, price.

The Ranger starts at R494,400 for the entry-level single cab, R504,900 for the super cab, and R510,700 for the double cab – while the Amarok goes for R505,000 in single-cab guise and R599,000 as a double cab, but can’t be had in the in-betweener super cab body style.

However, with more similarities than dissimilarities, potential buyers of the one will more than likely also be looking at the other.

In fact, the locally-built Amarok and Ranger are so alike they were the first vehicles ever to be voted the joint victors of the International Pick-up Awards as it was “impossible to separate the two models from each other,” said the competition judges.

As such, it would be interesting to see how local buyers have taken to the new bakkies and which one they prefer.

Ranger vs Amarok sales

Between December 2022 and August 2023, the Ford Ranger went on an impressive sales streak, recording a total of 17,677 units sold with its lowest month being January 2023 in which it racked up a tally of 1,269 units.

In comparison, the VW Amarok moved a much lower 2,851 units between March and November 2023, with its lowest month being July in which it got 250 sales.

The detailed performance of each bakkie can be seen in the below table:

*It must be noted that there were several units of the previous-gen Ranger still sold in December 2022, and these figures were combined with those of the new Ranger.

For the Amarok, VW has confirmed that 30 units of the previous-gen model were sold in March 2023, so we took the liberty of not counting these for the comparison.

Looking at these figures, it’s clear the Ranger was by far the most preferred, on average outselling its architectural twin roughly six units to one during their respective first nine months on sale.

However, it’s worth mentioning that the new Amarok didn’t do poorly at all as when taking into account the entire market.

The VW still outsold several other well-known bakkies by a good margin, including the Mazda BT-50 and Mitsubishi Triton, and went blow-for-blow with the Nissan Navara.

It also recorded more than double the 983 sales that the old Amarok achieved in its last nine months on the market.