Column Through the looking glass by Alexander Parker

Sifting through car sales data from 2011 holds a mirror up to huge societal change in South Africa

There’s a dealer on Koeberg Road in Cape Town that specialises in pristine elderly Mercedes-benzes. A 1986

560SEL there caught my atten‐ tion: 205 kw of leather-clad, extended-legroom resplen‐ dence, replete with rear leg rests, electric rear seats, airconditioning and hot-and-cold running butlers. It has been gently run-in over 34 years with 248 000 km on the odo‐ meter and, at just R140 000, it could just be the perfect set of wheels for the school run.

A quest for power and space found me there instead of a new-car dealership. Quality cars are prohibitively expensive and it occurred to me that COVID-19 has com‐ pounded and accelerated existing societal change. A change that is plain to see in car sales data.

The number of jobs lost in the first four months of the COVID lockdown (2,8 million) has outstripped a decade of job growth from 2009-2019 (2,4 million)! This needs to be understood as not only a tragedy, but also a pivot to efficiency by employers that will never be undone.

Economists study cars sales data as economic indicators, but they also reflect societal change. As manufacturers contem‐ plate a new year, they will learn much by casting an eye back a decade to January 2011’s figures. Working with the most up-todate data from Naamsa (September 2020), it’s like looking at a different country. Of course, January figures are to be taken with a pinch of salt as manufacturers massage their year-end numbers for reporting purposes, but the lessons are in the trends, not the quantum.

It’s clear the middle class has shrunk and emigrated almost en masse to Planet Crossover. In January 2011, Volkswagen sold 333 Jettas and Toyota sold 1 155 Corolla/ Auris models. In September 2020, the Jetta is a distant memory and Toyota shifted 100 Corolla/co‐ rolla hatchbacks. Camrys and Passats are now the background to childhood memor‐ ies of people I shall kindly describe as middle-aged.

South Africa’s wealth inequality is reflec‐ ted in the Gini Coefficient, which tells us that this is the most unequal country on Earth. Intersecting with this, we are begin‐ ning to see local manifestations of the global trend of an urban/rural divide, which will widen as time passes.

The move to SUVS by the shrinking middle class can be best illustrated by sales of the Golf and Tiguan. In January 2011, VW sold 714 Golfs and 106 Tiguans. In September 2020, it sold 276 Golfs (priced from R345 000) and 428 Tiguans (priced from R505 000). That’s widening inequality in action.

At least VW and Toyota can fall back on the T-cross, Polo and RAV4 for a little qual‐ ity volume, but the real volume growth has been in “global south” cars designed for

Alexander is a communications consultant and author. His book, 50 People Who F**ked Up South Africa: The Lost Decade, is on shelves now.

India, China and other developing markets. Here we are talking of the Toyota Etios (809 sold in September, non-existent in 2011); the locally produced Polo Vivo (1 621 units) and Toyota Quest (489 units). Renault’s Kwid (510 units) undercuts the Sandero (312 units). The Clio – the French firm’s super‐ mini in the developed world – sold just 23 in September 2020. Mahindra has grown sales more than 400% in a decade. These figures illustrate the extent to which the phe‐ nomenon of the missing middle has mani‐ fested over the past decade. COVID-19 will make this worse for premium brands. Consider that in January 2011, Audi sold 883 A4s. In September 2020, it sold 18.

This is not Audi’s pain to endure alone. Mercedes doesn’t publish detailed sales fig‐ ures but its total passenger car sales of 899 units in September 2020 doesn’t stack up well against the sale of 1 275 C-classes in January 2011. BMW’S 3 Series sales fell from 891 to 224 in the same period.

South Africa is a microcosm of the global market. It is diverse and unequal, and market divergence has been compounded by COVID-19. It throws up mind-boggling facts; such as that in September, Ferrari (17 units) out-sold the Fiat 500 (13 units), which illustrates just who has run out of money.

There will always be a small market for Evs and expensive crossovers, but in rural Mzansi – and with the squeezed middle class unlikely to recover quickly – price, reliability and frugality are paramount. An entirely different kind of car will do increas‐ ingly well here, which makes me think a 560 SEL might not only be a lot of fun, but also a pretty solid investment.