Car sales off to a good start
New vehicles sales data show an increase of 19.5%
South Africa’s motor industry is showing great resilience with sales data indicating that consumers continue to purchase new cars. The latest new vehicles sales data show that total vehicle sales in South Africa rose 19.5% year on year to 41 382 units
last month, with franchised dealers responsible for 84.2% of these sales.
Mark Dommisse, the chairperson of the National Automobile Dealers’ Association (Nada), said the South African motor industry remained buoyant despite the disappointing state of the local economy.
“What is amazing is that these heartening figures were delivered despite shortages of some models due to ongoing component shortages, particularly semiconductors, which are likely to be with us for most of this year. This shortage of product also means that few manufacturers or distributors are offering incentives to buyers, making January’s performance even more impressive,” he said.
“Rising interest rates and fuel prices will obviously have some impact on the market in 2022, but generally the outlook is brighter than at the same stage last year when lockdown regulations were more stringent,” said Dommisse.
Alex Boavida, the vice-chairperson of Nada, said January was interesting in that SA saw better new car stock availability than in recent months, but with lower stocking levels of good used cars.
“The global supply of semiconductors or microchips remains a challenge, but in January there were some signals of the situation improving,” said Boavida. Some sectors in the luxury segment of the car market showed improvements, such as Mercedes-benz doubling its monthly sales compared to the averages seen in the third quarter and fourth quarter of 2021.
“Another good example is Porsche, which reported 204 units sold – a 114% increase on the figure in December 2021.
“Sales of other luxury brands seem to be stabilising, but no massive recovery in this portion of the market is expected in the short term.”
The South African automotive industry consists of 22 companies involved in the production of cars and commercial vehicles. From these, there are seven major vehicle manufacturers/assemblers and several assemblers of medium and heavy commercial vehicles.