Toyota took gold and silver in the race for new vehicle sales leadership in the first quarter of 2023. The Hilux bakkie was runaway winner of the overall crown, with 10,024 sales between January and March. That was 80% more than the runner-up — the Toyota Corolla Cross car, with 5,564.
The Cross also led a Toyota one-two in the car market. In second place was the little Starlet, with 4,624 sales.
True to South African tradition, bakkies remain a firm local favourite — confounding “experts” who argued a few years ago that demand would dry up as growing numbers of SUVs and vans entered the market. Ford’s Ranger and Isuzu’s D-Max both outperformed all cars, with the exception of Corolla Cross, in the first three months. Indeed, three of the top four overall performers were bakkies.
After Hilux and Corolla came Ranger (5,322) and D-Max (5,309), followed by Starlet (4,624). Filling out the top 10 were the Volkswagen (VW) Vivo (4,583), Chery Tiggo (4,210), Toyota Hi-Ace taxi (4,177), Suzuki Swift (4,114) and Nissan NP200 bakkie (3,582).
Take out the bakkies and taxi, and the top 10 cars were Cross, Starlet, Vivo, Tiggo, Swift, VW Polo (2,967), Toyota Fortuner (2,643), VW T-Cross (2,613), Haval Jolion (2,392) and Hyundai Grand i10 (2,286).
Two brands stand out there: Chery and Haval. It’s not so long ago that South African consumers looked down their noses at Chinese vehicles — and with good reason. Among the first wave of Chinese brands to hit South Africa’s shores, most were, frankly, awful. Besides dodgy vehicle quality, after-sales service and parts availability were an afterthought. Several brands quit after realising South African consumers were not gullible as they’d hoped.
Today, with better quality and much-improved support from their Chinese principals, they are entering the South African mainstream, and not only in the car market. Great Wall Motors is making headway with its light commercial vehicles, and truckmaker FAW is increasing market share out of its Eastern Cape assembly plant at Coega, near Gqeberha — though it remains a long way behind established market brands like Mercedes-Benz, Hino, Isuzu, MAN, Scania and UD.
Ironically, one of FAW’s nearest Coega neighbours is Beijing Automotive Industrial Co, whose slowness in fulfilling a promised R11bn vehicle manufacturing investment is reinforcing South African prejudices against Chinese carmakers.
For most consumers and fleet buyers, luxury is less important than affordability
Chinese progress is only one of the changing market trends underlined by the first-quarter figures, which were provided by Naamsa and Lightstone automotive intelligence.
The shift towards smaller, cheaper cars seems inexorable, driven by rising interest rates, fuel prices and inflation. For most consumers and fleet buyers, luxury is less important than affordability. The market share of brands like Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi are a fraction of what they used to be. Hyundai, Kia, Renault, Suzuki and the Chinese are profiting. Suzuki sales have increased by over 300% in the past five years, with average annual growth of 61.2%.
In the car market, it is outsold only by Toyota and VW. Up to March, Toyota sold 20,238 cars, VW 13,733 and Suzuki 11,937. Behind them came Hyundai (7,156), Renault (6,177), Kia (4,841), Chery (4,210), Nissan (4,122), BMW (3,998) and Haval (3,882).
VW has led industry car sales in recent years, while Toyota has dominated the aggregate market for cars and commercial vehicles. Toyota has turned the car tables so far in 2023 — though the German company hopes the recent launch of its new Amarok will help it make serious inroads into the bakkie market.
Ford, too, is hoping for more penetration there now that it is producing all its Ranger variants. When the previous Ranger was launched, it went toe-to-toe with Hilux for several months, with market leadership switching back and forth between the two. India’s Mahindra is also making waves in this sector.
By the end of March, the motor industry had sold 139,437 cars and commercial vehicles. That was 2.4% more than the 136,192 at the same stage of 2022. Car sales were down 0.6%, from 93,644 to 93,100. The market for light commercial vehicles was 9% ahead, medium commercials 13.4% and extra-heavy trucks 12.4%. The only casualty was heavy truck sales, down 10%. The biggest single increase in the first quarter was bus sales, at 26.9%, but since that signalled a volume rise from 93 to 118, it had negligible impact on the overall market.
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