The car brand behind Toyota’s success in South Africa

Toyota is the best-selling car brand in South Africa, but its success is not as clear cut as it initially appears.

The Japanese carmaker dominates the local car industry with sales that are magnitudes greater than most of its competitors.

In October alone, Toyota sold a staggering 13,559 units – nearly double that of the second-best-selling manufacturer.

These were the top 10 car brands in South Africa in October 2025:

1. Toyota – 13,559 units
2. Suzuki – 6,890 units
3. VW – 6,221 units
4. Hyundai – 3,017 units
5. Ford – 2,946 units
6. GWM – 2,805 units
7. Isuzu – 2,784 units
8. Chery – 2,210 units
9. Kia – 1,808 units
10. Mahinda – 1,551 units

As another point of reference, the industry sold a combined 55,956 vehicles last month, which means Toyota holds a 24% share in a market with over 50 car brands.

It’s indisputable that Toyota is a dominant force in South Africa, but part of that success can be attributed to another company – Suzuki.

Toyota is not (technically) the best-selling car brand in South Africa

Suzuki has been in South Africa for many years, but it experienced an enormous uptick in sales around the start of the decade.

The automaker supplies many of the most affordable cars in the country, which have resonated with consumers in the years following the Covid-19 pandemic when budgets are tight and many households are downsizing their purchases.

In 2024, Suzuki overtook VW to become the nation’s second-best-selling manufacturer, a feat that would have been hard to believe just a few years earlier.

While Suzuki is a Japanese brand, all of the cars it sells in South Africa are produced by its Indian division – Maruti Suzuki.

Budget models like the Swift are more popular than ever, which has created opportunities for Suzuki and its business partner Toyota.

One of the biggest issues Toyota currently faces in South Africa is that it doesn’t offer any “truly” affordable cars, as the brand’s core products like the Corolla Cross and Hilux have gradually crept upmarket as a result of inflation and other economic factors.

As a result, the company has a gap in its portfolio for sub-R400,000 cars, which is where Suzuki comes in.

Like many car brands these days, Toyota and Suzuki have a partnership to share the cost and development of new vehicles.

This results in “badge engineering,” which is an industry term that refers to when one carmaker sells another brand’s model as its own.

In the case of the Toyota-Suzuki partnership, the former has badge-engineered several Suzuki models to bolster its lineup in South Africa.

The Toyota Starlet, for example, is actually a Suzuki Baleno, and this tactic has proven to be immensely successful for Toyota.

The company’s rebadged Suzuki products sell thousands of units per month, and now make up a significant portion of all Toyota sales in South Africa.

Cars.co.za recently broke down the Naamsa sales figures for the Toyota cars and their Suzuki siblings, which you can see below:

What’s interesting is that the Toyota models tend to be far more popular than their Suzuki equivalents, showing how much power can be found in brand recognition.

This raises the question of what Toyota’s “true” sales figures look like if we were to subtract the Suzuki reskins from its total.

Without models like the Starlet and Vitz, Toyota’s sales work out to 8,068 units, which is still significantly higher than any other manufacturer, with one exception.

If we add the 5,491 rebadge sales to Suzuki’s own total of 6,890, we see that the company technically sold a whopping 12,381 cars in South Africa in October.

In other words, Suzuki is selling 42% more cars in South Africa than Toyota, even if most of them have a Toyota badge on the grille.