What do BMW, Toyota Hilux and Golf GTI have in common?

The numbers have been crunched and the latest bi-annual AutoTrader Car Industry Report, titled #ReBound, is out.

The report makes fascinating reading and has revealed eight interesting facts about the local car market you might have never guessed.

Here they are:

1. A total of 276 million pre-owned vehicle searches were conducted over a six month period. These searches took place on AutoTrader during the period July 2020 to December 2020; the same period covered by the report. This record number represents growth of 54.1% year-on-year and demonstrates that the local pre-owned market is thriving.
2. More than three out of every four South African consumers (77%) plan to upgrade their current car or buy an additional car. This buoyant market is reinforced by the fact that visits to the site in January 2021 were 42% up on January 2020.
3. BMW is the most searched-for pre-owned car brand. 15.4% of all car brand searches were dedicated to BMW, up from 12% previously. A total of 35 274 027 searches took place for the German premium brand.
4. The most searched for car model is the Toyota Hilux, which is incidentally also South Africa’s top-selling new vehicle. It made up 4% of all searches and it accounted for 9.3 million searches.
5. The Volkswagen Golf GTI is the most searched-for variant.

Facelift Toyota Hilux Raider

This iconic hot hatch accounts for 0.65% of all variant searches – which translates into 1.5 million direct searches for “Golf GTI”.

6. There are over 2.4 million in-market car shoppers on Google every month. This is why car dealerships are using the internet to build their brands in the long term and they’re investing in digital retailing.
7. Online and mobile are rocking the automotive world.

BMW engine cover

According to the Automotive Shopper Study conducted by Google which is referenced in the report, some 95% of consumers buying a car use digital as a source of information while 60% of all automotive searches come from a mobile device (this is true also for motoring marketplaces such as AutoTrader, which receives almost 70% of searches from a mobile device).

8. South Africa has one of the highest number of charging stations per electric vehicle (EV) in the world. While there might not be many EVs on South Africa’s roads, the infrastructure is already in place.

“We have one charging station per four EVs and the rest of the world has one in 20. While the penetration of EVs is low in South Africa, I can safely say that the charging infrastructure is there!” reveals George Mienie, AutoTrader CEO.

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