South Africa’s new vehicle sales ended September with a full-house of sales increases this year and the third in a row exceed 50 000 units.
With and offset 54 700 units, 24.3% up on last year’s 44 000 and the highest since the same month a decade ago, the local industry has also gone a year without posting any overall losses since October last year.
One of the telling stories remains the ongoing rise of Chinese vehicles, with two present among the top 10 best-selling brands, namely Great Wall Motors and Chery.
Soon to be bolstered by arrival of returning brands Changan, Geely, JMC and debutant Deepal before the end of the year, the arrival next year of iCaur and Lepas will see no less than 21 Chinese brands being present in South Africa.
Currently, products from the People’s Republic are from the following brands;
- BAIC;
- BYD;
- Chery;
- Dayun;
- Dongfeng;
- Foton;
- GAC;
- Great Wall Motors (GWM) Haval;
- JAC;
- Jaecoo;
- Jetour;
- LDV;
- MG;
- Omoda;
- Riddara
Of these though, only a handful report their sales to the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa (Naamsa), the omissions being BYD, Dayun, Dongfeng, GAC, LDV and Riddara.
While unlikely to unseat Toyota or any of the other customary top-five best performing brands anytime soon, the September figures still make for interesting ready when taking the People’s Republic brand in mind.
Besides GWM, Chery occupies three of the top five places by virtue of itself in second place, and its Omoda & Jaecoo and Jetour marques in third and fourth.
Again, the biggest surprise after only two months of sales reporting, is MG in fifth place.
In total, South Africa’s Chinese vehicle brands obtained the following sales numbers in September:
- GWM – 2 620
- Chery – 2 264
- Omoda & Jaecoo – 1 201
- Jetour – 815
- MG – 557
- Foton – 410
- JAC – 225
- BAIC – 124
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