GM’s disinvestment sees sales fall

LOCAL sales of General Motors cars collapsed last month, following the US-owned comp decision to disinvest from South Africa at the end of this year.

In April, before the news broke, General Motors SA sold 730 cars. After the May 18 announcement of its intended departure, June sales fell to 427.

Chevrolet cars, which will disappear from the local market after December, fared worst, tumbling from 407 to 164.

The little Chevrolet Utility pick-up, on the other hand, increased sales. One of only two small bakkies left in the market, with the Nissan NP200, it has a loyal customer base and is expected to remain popular until it is also discontinued in December.

The Opel car brand, which will remain after being sold by General Motors, also lost sales last month but will be reassured by the limited scale of the decline: from 323 to 263.

From next year, it will be distributed in South Africa by the Williams Hunt dealer network, part of the Unitrans transport and logistics group.

Overall, the local new-vehicle market showed resilience in June.

Figures released yesterday by the department of trade and industry showed that aggregate sales of all vehicles grew 0.9% from a year earlier, from 44 951 to 45 369.

Car sales dropped 2.2%, from 29 269 to 28 639, but an 8% rise in bakkie demand, plus an improved performance by medium trucks, more than compensated.

As a result, sales of all new vehicles in the first half of this year totalled 269 006 – down 1.3% from last year’s 272 568.

Cars were down 2.3%, from 180 638 to 176 557.

Despite June’s improved performance, talk of recovery is a long way off.

The National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of SA (Naamsa) said there was still too much political and economic uncertainty for the market to strengthen appreciably and the best the industry could hope for was a full-year market on a par with last year. — BDLive