Naamsa – the national industry body – reported 51 886 sales for the month, which translates into a year-on-year growth of 1.7%. The spike in sales also helped to reverse much of the last few months’ sales decline, bringing the market up to just 0.5% shy of its sales for the year-to-date last year.
Several market analysts suggested that the welcome spike in vehicle sales were due to a slowdown in vehicle price inflation and the fact that we are in a buyer’s market where there is a lot of very good deals to be had. Others say that the market was always expected to recover towards the end of the year as it normally does.
Still others point to the fact that the vehicle rental industry bought almost 20% of all the vehicles sold. This is a positive indication of their expectation of a very busy festive season, with a lot of inbound guests and economic activity.
The VW Polo Vivo retained its crown as the best-selling passenger vehicle (3 009 sales) and the Toyota Hilux dominated the light commercial market with sales of 3 352 bakkies in October. To explain these two vehicles’ dominance of the market, considerer than over 10% of all the cars, trucks, busses, etc. sold in South Africa were either a Hilux or a Polo.
Overall, Toyota sold the most vehicles with 13 342 new vehicle sales for a market share of over 25%. The Japanese brand also outsold Volkswagen in the passenger vehicle market, which is a rare achievement.
Volkswagen follows in second place with 8 983 vehicles sold, followed by Ford (5 421), Nissan (4 902 sales) and Hyundai (3 160 sales).
Even in the upper crust of the market, sales were very good. Bentley handed over 10 new cars - seven of them Bentaygas – Ferrari delivered 5 new units and Maserati also delivered 5 new cars. Porsche does not report detailed sales figures anymore, but they had a cracker of a sales month with 178 Porsches sold.
Naamsa expects that November will be a good sales month, while December may slow down somewhat, due to the summer hoiidays. On balance, the industry should end the year in much the same position as it was last year, with little prospects of growth for 2019.
