Clean sweep for Toyota as October new vehicle sales rise

In the first clean sweep since before the flooding of its Prospecton Plant in Durban six months ago, Toyota hit top three best-selling vehicles mark in October.

Hilux still top

The sole automaker to, once again, record five digit figures with sales of 12 574, the Hilux, unsurprisingly, remained the country’s top-selling new vehicles with offset of 3 336, followed by the Corolla Cross (2 014) and Urban Cruiser (1 820).

Placing fourth, one up from September, was the outgoing Ford Ranger on 1 807 with the star of last month, the Isuzu D-Max, finishing fifth by the smallest of margins with combined sales of 1 802.

The still locally assembly flavour prevailed throughout the rest of the top ten with the Volkswagen Polo Vivo notching-up seventh position (1 583) behind the Indian assembled Suzuki Swift (1 693), with eighth place being occupied by the Toyota HiAce (1 274) and ninth by the Nissan NP200 (1 096). Taking tenth was the Chinese-made Haval H6 with its highest uptake to date of 956 units.

The figures

In what has become a new precedent for the local market post-Covid-19, the October figures released by the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa (NAAMSA) showed yet another increase, not only for the tenth month in a row, but also across the various segments for the second consecutive month.

Despite the October uptake of 45 966 vehicles being slightly down on September’s 47 786, it still represented an increase 11.4% over the same time twelve months ago.

ALSO READ: Isuzu D-Max emerges as September new vehicle sales highlight

On the mentioned segment fronts, new passenger vehicle sales rose 10.4% from 27 716 to 30 597, while light commercial vehicles had another strong uptake of 14.3% from 11 148 in 2021 to 27 716 in 2022.

The markets for medium and heavy-duty commercial vehicles also failed to disappoint with the former going up by 29.9% from 592 to 769 units, and the latter by 67 vehicles or 3.7% to 1 862.

Rounding the month off, new vehicle exports increased by 16.1% from October 2021’s 25 407 to this year’s 29 508.

“The new vehicle market’s performance during October 2022 remained reassuring despite tough economic pressures, although the pace of recovery for the year to date has eased to 13,1% compared to the corresponding period 2021,” NAAMSA said in a statement.

At the same time though, the association also warned that, “growth prospects for the balance of the year remain constrained as higher interest rates and consequent higher debt servicing costs weigh on disposable income.

“The persistence of load shedding and little hope that this will be alleviated over the near term likely also weighed on sentiment.”

Behind Toyota, both Volkswagen and Suzuki kept their respective second and third best-selling brand positions with sales of 4 904 and 4 112 units, followed by Nissan (3 011), Hyundai (2 703), Haval (2 602), Ford (2 458), Isuzu (2 187), Renault (2 011) and Kia (1 780).

OCTOBER TOP 50 BEST SELLERS