MOTOR BRIEFS
75,000th SA customer and set a new record for its best sales month yet with 1,581 new cars and light commercials. It pushed the brand to number eight in SA’s list of best-selling manufacturers.
August is Suzuki’s third record month in a row, representing a jump in year-todate sales of 23%, compared with a decline in the overall market of 3.9% and a more acute drop of 5.7% in the passenger vehicle market.
Suzuki’s new sales record follows exactly two years after it broke through the 1,000 sales barrier for the first time, with 1,004 sales in August 2017, says André Venter, divisional manager for sales and marketing at Suzuki Auto SA.
The brand’s top seller last month was the Swift with 663 units, followed by the Ignis (188), Celerio (141), Dzire (140) and Ertiga (138), and 115 units of the Suzuki Jimny.
Sales of the Jimny have increased steadily over the past few months as Suzuki has tried to make more new units available to shorten the waiting period for the popular 4x4.
VW PRODUCES ITS 200,000TH POLO IN SA
Volkswagen SA (VWSA) reached a historical milestone on September 6 when the 200,000th unit of the current Volkswagen Polo rolled off the production line at the Uitenhage plant.
The factory has been manufacturing Polos since 1996, when it started local production on the Polo Classic. Over the past 23 years it has produced a variety of Polo models, with the current hatchback starting local production in 2018. Of the 200,000 new Polos that have been manufactured, 153,582 units were exported and 46,418 were sold in the local market.
In total, Volkswagen has manufactured 1,053,600 vehicles for export since 1994. The plant manufactured 110,265 vehicles between January and August 2019, including the Polo, Polo Vivo and Polo GTI.
The new Polo is exported to all right-hand markets worldwide, with the Uitenhage plant also supplementing production on left-hand-drive Polos for Europe.